Synchronized: Coalescence
by Stormbreaker99
Summary: One sarcastic boy, one brilliant girl. Both play a hand in Aincrad's creation. The past will converge with the future as Shoichi Shin sells a code needed for the game, and Kairi Ono is hired as an alpha tester. Both must struggle with their own histories to discover who truly is to blame for the castle in the sky. Follow OCs and revamped canons.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Here it is, the revamp of the Band of Brothers series! I hope you enjoy it, and please, by all means, leave comments and reviews!**

* * *

 **Amorphous Collagen**

 **Shoichi Shin**

 **Shin Household**

Even before he was swallowed by gelatin, Sho was having a horrendous week.

It began in his room, a zen-like space with minimal decorations: a bookshelf against the wall, a desk, and his gaming rig. He sat on the normally bare floor, fiddling with a rectangular, blue-shaded device. Similar parts were strewn around him in a loose circle of glass, aluminum, and sheets of polyethylene. This wasn't necessarily the horrendous part. The project was enjoyable, if only for the couple of hours that it distracted him from the real terror behind the walls: school.

An absolute, God-forsaken, hell hole of a dimension, school was the biggest obstacle between wallowing in an endless cycle of education and partying like no tomorrow. Impossible to escape, destructive, and alive, its spawn—a bio book and stacks of papers—breathed heavily on his desk.

Sho stared at the pile. Perhaps if he tried hard enough, they would vaporize. Then again, his chances of latent laser vision were as high as his chances of discovering the Higgs-Boson. Both were possible, neither was going to happen. He sighed and ran a hand through his black hair, a perpetual state between completely unkempt and buzzed until nearly bald. Asian beyond all measure, he tapped a finger against the box in his lap and wondered if joining the circus was an option.

"I'd make a great carny," he muttered. "I've even got an act."

It was appealing, of course, not to have your cingulate gyrus dry up every night. Nothing was more depressing than the illustration that sneered at him from the front page of the take-home practice exam, discarded in his bookbag by the waste bin. He remembered it clearly: squares-missing-triangles, little antibody wishbones floating in a perverted alphabet soup—something about acetylcholine forced a curse from his mouth. Snapping another piece on to his box, he raised it to eye-level and nodded.

"Theory allows for _practice_ ," he repeated mockingly, adding a high-pitched lilt to his voice. "Without theory, _no one_ ever built anything worth building! After all, knowledge grants power and absolute knowledge grants absolute power!" Snort. As if Ms. Taeyhoshi knew what power was. The most that ditzy brunette knew was how to turn on the toaster and clop about in high heels. "Oh, Mister Ayato!" he shrilled. He opened the toolbox he'd made specifically for this project. "You're such a model student. I wish everyone was like you!"

Sho rolled his eyes.

He slid his stuff under the bed and straightened. Muscles he never knew he had screeched in agony, torn into positions that defined where he sat for most of the morning. "Oh, I realize it's Halloween," he mocked, pursing his lips like the annoying biology teacher of class 4B. "But guess what, I don't give a flying squirrel! Hehe, I think the universe is a marble, and everyone loves me! Here, have this overly unnecessary packet, finish it for Monday, and—goodness me, I don't know—we'll have a test in two weeks!" Breaking character, Sho dove headfirst into his bed.

"TWO WEEKS!" he screamed, voice muffled by musky sheets.

While not a man of prayer, Sho was willing to risk one for the sake of his sanity. He rolled like a burrito over on to his back and raised his eyes to his white painted ceiling. Once upon a time, there would have been plastic, glow-in-the-dark constellations puttied into the plaster.

Now he regretted staying at home.

"By the lords of whatever unholy timeline I've ended up in," he began, hands held together, "And Moses too, because why the hell not—I hereby ask Saint La Salle to bless me with his holy presence. I also want a hundred on that physics lab, a ninety-five on the calc exam, and a bottle of orange juice. Amen, Shalom, and may the Force be with you." Making the sign of the cross, that claw symbol from Percy Jackson, and pretending to spin Buddhist beads through his fingers (which really was just a stray gear he found in his pocket), Sho projected his entire mental energy into communing with the spirits.

Their divine response was a silence more awkward than a rejection to prom.

"Alright," he said. "Fine. We'll play it your way. I'll get out of bed and _leave_ _the room_. Whatever."

He flung earbuds on to his pillow and meandered outside. Brilliant light from the hall blinded the Shin family's resident bat. Stumbling his way down the stairs, Sho rubbed his eyes and headed for the kitchen. Breakfast had since passed; his only thought lay in the Promise Land that was his fridge. He expected to be alone but was greeted by a broad-shouldered individual solo-dancing to the radio. He rubbed his eyes again, in case he was somehow hallucinating.

The individual wore a white tank, matching white pants, and a loose black belt looped around his hips—and boy did he work those hips. An oldie but a goodie, he flossed to-and-fro with maddening acceleration while a hip-hop beat ramped in volume. Then he stopped, mid-motion, and spun, turning around to reveal a pot boiling with some reddish goo. Strawberry scents wafted into the air. Still bouncing his hips like some crazed Zumba instructor, the dancer finally noticed the dark cloud that rolled into the room. Quickly setting down the mixture, he sheepishly gave a wave to his brother.

"I'm going to pretend I never saw that," was Sho's response. He pushed himself off the wall and uncrossed his arms, pattering over to the fridge in his dust-brown socks. He could feel eyes on his feet. "And don't you start. I already told you—I'll do laundry like… whenever."

"You should probably do it soon." The cooking-boy said. His tongue stuck out as he carefully poured the slush-like concoction into a vertical mold shaped like an apple. Steam poured out from the opening at the top, and he waved his hands to banish the smoke. "Oh, and before _you_ start, yes, I did turn off the smoke detector."

"That's great, Raiden," Sho said dryly. He pulled a Gogurt tube from the fridge's door-bin, thought against it, and returned with five more tubes. Yanking a cheese knife from its wooden block, he sliced off the tops of the tubes. The scraps were tossed into the trash, and he was soon seated at the dinner table, right leg kicked up on the back of a chair.

Raiden sighed and made a shooing motion towards the offending foot. There was no movement as Sho simply continued to guzzle on the plastic tubes, pointedly raising an eyebrow at his brother, daring him to try. For a moment, there was a fire within the two's eyes, the older's black-within-black, an edge about the gaze, and the other's, brown like mud, touched with amusement. The stare off lasted mere seconds until one remained. The victor pumped his fist in victory.

Sho rolled his eyes and removed his leg from the table.

"So," Raiden said, back to his cooking. "Whatcha been up to all day?" He grinned mischievously and grabbed the stranded cheese knife. Sho raised an eyebrow at how casually his brother twirled the blade. "Did you finally finish Pandora's box?"

"That's not what it's called," Sho answered. He crinkled up another finished tube and Kobe-ed it into the trash can. "It's a portable soil, air, and water testing device. It doesn't release the Seven Deadly Sins or whatever."

"But it is a box. And it's kind of mystical looking. It's better than 'portable soil, air, and water testing device.'" He made bunny ears with his finger and pointed at Sho with the knife. "Rule one of marketing: a cool name. If you're gonna make millions, you need something that rolls off the tongue. It doesn't even have to be semantically accurate."

"Yeah? And when did you suddenly become an expert in marketing?"

"I told Will about the project. He sounded excited. Said to contact him if you ever need help."

Sho raised his other eyebrow and stuck a Gogurt into his mouth. "I can't be the only one who thinks that dude is kinda shifty."

"Sho, you think everyone is shifty."

"I mean—when you're _that_ rich and dress in essentially _only_ brand name—it's _kinda_ hard not to wonder what a dude is up to. He legit rolls up to school in a Tesla! And not just any Tesla," Sho said, energized by the shit-posting, "The Model X2. The X2, Raiden. The mother fricking X2. That thing is like—I don't even know. It's just—I can't. I can't. The dude is way too rich."

"But he's also a close family friend," Raiden said. He waved his ladle around the kitchen. "Look at us. We're pretty rich too."

"Yeah, but it's not Lee William McCarthy rich."

"Okay, I guess that's fair." Raiden nodded and turned back to the stove.

"Hardly." A moment of silent covered the room, and Sho quickly changed the topic. "By the way, how many of those are you going to make?"

"Let's see," Raiden counted on his fingers, "I need two for the party tonight, one as a gag gift for Gilly, and I might've wanted one for myself." He performed that nervous tiptoe raise, like he really _was_ sorry for eating an entire container of hardened slime in one sitting.

Sho knew better.

"Shouldn't you stop calling her Gilly?" Sho sucked the rest of the yogurt from his tube. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he dug into his pockets for that gear from earlier. "She's like fifteen. And a gag gift? That?" He gestured in the general direction of a giant blueberry mold that now sat filled next to the apple. "You might as well have hurled into a bucket and frozen it. That stuff tastes like the rough end of a boot and has the consistency of a lump of lard. At least get her a fidget spinner. Not this elementary school crap."

"Yeah, but that's just too easy." Raiden shrugged and popped open another box of fruity mix. "It's handmade. It's special."

"And," another voice interjected before Sho could add his acerbic two-cents, "today's a rather special day."

Like a pop star strutting on to stage, the youngest of the Shin brothers appeared, sauntering into the kitchen, completely topless. He wore matching white pants like Raiden, except these looked loose and mobile. A similar black belt was tied around his waist. He wore no socks, just barefoot against the cold tile. Clapping Raiden on the back, he dropped himself into the seat across from Sho and rested his chin upon his hands.

"Kuzon," the older two brothers said simultaneously, "put on a shirt."

"Shirts are for those not comfortable with their body," Kuzon quipped. He reached forwards with a finger, intent on poking the contents of the apple. It was slapped away by Raiden's watchful ladle. "Dude, come on. Lemme taste it. Last time you made gelatin, it was way too fruity. You gotta have sixty sugar, forty fruit."

"I'm following the recipe," Raiden pointed out. "It specifically said to mix the entire contents with forty percent the amount of sugar." He picked up the box and tapped a finger on a line. "Right here. Mix the entire packet thoroughly and add sugar."

"Do the math," Sho said bluntly. He was nibbling a fingernail and spinning the gear he had on a chopstick. "See if it's really forty."

"And now you're doubting the box."

"Just saying. Might not be forty. If you're going for forty, then actually get forty. If you're not, then follow whatever weird baking scheme those guys want you to do."

"I'm just making gelatin," Raiden chuckled. "How hard can this really be?"

"Real hard," Kuzon smirked, "if you can't figure out how to make it taste good. Sixty, forty. I give it to you on a finely served, ornery plate." He stretched and the six-pack he so caringly cultivated rippled. At some point, Sho wondered if they were just Hawaiian buns. "Oh, by the way, Sho—my dude. Good news."

"What?" Sho said dully. The only thing he'd heard was his name. Perhaps the gear would work best externally to the insertion slot? The polyethylene was always getting stuck and torn.

"Wow, try to sound a little more excited. I am doing you a fantastic favor."

"Now this I need to hear," Raiden said. He stopped his mixing and leaned against the kitchen counter, grinning like it was Christmas Eve.

With all eyes on him, Kuzon grandly waved his hands. He brandished his phone, the Excalibur of the modern age. Then he sliced down upon the unworthy heathens before him and showed them both the incredible text that he received. In slightly dimmed lighting, the words « Sure she said she'll go » winked back at them, and Kuzon crowed in victory.

"I got you a date!"

"Wait, Sho?" Raiden balked at the news as if the eldest's social skills were a foregone conclusion. "No way."

"Yes, way. I got that Katta High chick to go to the party tonight. She originally wasn't going to go, but with a little of _wooing_ on my part, I convinced her sister to convince _her_ to go to the party with us and get you—my mans—absolutely lit."

Wait, us? When was there an us? Wait wait wait!

Snapping back to reality—oops there went gravity—Sho blinked owlishly and swayed precariously in his chair. "Objection—"

"—Overruled."

"Can someone with a clue tell me what this is about? Please? Right now?"

He was hopelessly single and could care less at this point.

"Listen," Kuzon said in a voice you reserved only for babies, "you dolt, you need a girlfriend. And for a Halloween party, this is _literally_ the best time to do it. Winter is getting here. It's cuffing season. There's no better time."

"Yeah?" Sho said, sarcasm dripping from his words. "And when did this _amazing_ revelation come to be? You're just going to make choices for me now?"

Taxation without representation! Taxation without representation! Quick! Grab the flags!

"Dude, you need to get… well…" Kuzon looked around suspiciously.

"Mom's not here," Sho reminded him sardonically, "You don't need to be a good boy."

"Fine. Laid. You need to get laid."

"Right… because it is the life goal of every teenage male." His sarcasm couldn't contain itself. The faucet no longer dripped. A steady stream escaped from his lips, and Sho leaned forwards, a wolfish smile radiating his face. "Sure, let's get laid. Let's lose our virginity in the most, fastest way humanly possible. Let's not even _decide_ what the girl thinks. No no, we just want to focus on _us_ , and what our fucking _dicks_ want."

"Woah, hey now," Raiden interrupted before something less than friendly could erupt at the kitchen table. He pushed himself between the two brothers who were now almost nose to nose. "Kuzon, don't bother Sho with this, okay? He doesn't need the heat. And Sho, no swearing, please. Kuzon just wants you to relax and make more friends. He didn't mean you had to do anything."

"Oh, no," Kuzon mumbled, "I did." He angrily pushed himself off his seat and grabbed the third boiling pot on the stove. Grape joined its berry-scented friends in the air. "It's fine, Raiden. Whatever. I mean, it's not like Sho _has_ any other friends other than us and Will. It's not like he goes outside, or hangs out. I mean—" He shrugged. "—I gave it my best shot. She's still coming to that party. I'm sure she'll find someone with a bit more class to hang out with."

"Actually," Sho burst out suddenly.

Kuzon looked hopeful for just a moment, and Sho felt almost bad for crushing his dreams.

Almost.

"Tell her that I'm _not_ going to the party with her. Ever. And tell her that the chances of her beating me at regionals are so slim that she might as well try fishing for a great white shark in the Yangtze. Tell _that_ to her."

There was a considerable pause after the caustic outburst. Slowly, Kuzon blinked. He placed the pot down.

"You can paraphrase," Sho added, driving the point home. "Verbatim if you like. Or not. Your choice."

Muttering a few curses, the younger brother stormed out the room. Raiden just looked at Sho in disappointment. "He was only trying to help."

"Unwanted," Sho said with an eye roll.

Having had it with— _everything_ —Sho also stood. He glared at the molds and decided.

"God, I hate gelatin."

With that, he left the room, swiping the gear and chopsticks that remained on the table.

* * *

 **Floor 1: Southern Fields**

Purple. Purple gelatin.

He hated _purple gelatin_.

He really should've been more specific, you know, just in case he ended up dying and someone had to write his obituary.

They're going to ask, years down the road, where Sho was when he died; how he died; and whether he went out like a badass or passed quietly into the void. Jokes on them. He was simply swallowed by a huge gelatin creature and held captive inside its engorged stomach. Like a twisted version of a kangaroo and its 'roo, Sho floated inside the « _King Blob_ », arms and legs spread asunder. His limbs continued to move, reaching further and further, straining the tends and ligaments that bound them to his body. He could guess what the monster wanted to do.

All things considered, not a bad headline.

Sucking in air was difficult. It was the same as sucking in blubber; the oxygen he did manage to consume was mixed with ooze that stuck to his esophagus. He coughed, which only served to make it worse. His arms struggled, locked in place by a honey-like substance. His face stung; the purple crap around him called tears to his eyes. Bubbles rose from where the tears touched the gelatin, and Sho managed to raise his eyebrows.

Water. Gelatin melted in water. That was the weakness. He needed more water.

But where the hell was he going to get water inside a blob?

Sho could think of two ways: first, he bawls his eyes out until he created a sizeable hole where his head could fit through. From there, he could eat his way out, though he really really didn't want to do that. Of all the ridiculous stuff you could eat in Aincrad, Sho didn't want one of them being the flesh of a blob. For one thing, there were all sorts of debris floating around him. For another—just, ew, no. Gelatin was disgusting. Gelatin infused with anger?

Jesus Christ.

The second way was to spit. Spit so much that it would burn like acid through the blob. That too presented a few problems. A) He wasn't hydrated enough to recreate a cowboy Western movie. B) As much as he found gelatin repulsive, he also didn't want his own spit surrounding his face like a new-age, hipster facelift. His pores were fine, thank you. He's had enough kale and spinach over the past couple days to last him a few centuries.

But, as he deliberated on his grand escape, he could feel his body being torn apart. It began slowly at first, just a few inches at a time. Then it intensified as the Blob's innards gripped his extremities. He could feel a burning sensation around his wrists and ankles. His joints protested at the tension, and the HP bar to the right of his vision shrunk steadily smaller. _Pop!_ Gasping, Sho could no longer feel his wrist. Strange spikes of pain ricocheted over his body, and he remembered Raiden very specifically telling him that there was no pain in Aincrad.

Nevermind. Spit it is.

Shot after shot of saliva flew out of his lips. Sho could feel invisible hands grasping his head. Every second it tightened further and further till he saw flashing lights. The teen wanted to scream and kick and punch. He wanted it to stop— _needed_ it to stop. He could envision the bones in his neck cracking, the muscles tearing. The picture was so vivid in his mind's eye that it invigorated the pins and needles around his throat. His fists clenched, and body convulsed.

 _Come on, come on_ …

Slowly, the King Blob's stomach fizzled. Purple haze poured from its body and a large chunk liquefied. It dumped on to the floor; Newton did the rest as Sho dropped unceremoniously to the dirt. He inhaled deep gulps of air, greedy for the life-giving essence. A headache pounded his skull, and the back of his eyes felt like drums in the world's most rowdy rock concert. He clutched his left arm to his chest and forced energy to his legs. Their aching groan brought a grimace to his face. Just as he managed to gather himself to his feet, a massive fist struck him in the side, and the teen was flung into the air.

"Agh, shit," he barked, crashing into a tree. Leaves showered down around him as the King Blob roared. "Now you're pissed," Sho managed through clenched teeth. "Great. Someone remind me to kill Raiden after this."

Checking over his HP, which was at approximately half, Sho pushed himself upright yet again and pressed his back against the tree trunk. His opponent towered in front of him, advancing at a pace comparable to a slow walk. Hits like a truck and moves like a snail—classic MMORPG archetypes. The one issue—there was no way he was fighting this thing head on. As for physical weakness, he could see none. Characterized by its name, it was a fat lump with purple globules that dragged themselves across the ground, eating up the earth beneath it. It had pancake-like, wine-colored eyes and fists the size of cinder blocks. Where its chest had been, a human-shaped hole remained. Its health was a quarter gone, and already the wound was stitching itself together, increments of HP rising. Sho rolled his eyes.

"Not one ounce of luck." Grunting, he limped around the oak. Settling down into the shadows beneath the branches, he considered his options.

A weapon. He needed his staff.

There was, unfortunately, another problem: it lay buried in the back of the King Blob's head. He peered around the trunk and saw it, speared diagonally from its left temple to its right cheek. The monster had to be over eight feet tall; no matter how mad his hops, there was no way he was going to reach it. And even if he could Michael Jordan his way up there, the thing wasn't going to let him. As Sho watched, it ripped off a chunk of its flesh and lobbed it in an arc. "Shit!" he yelped and dove back under cover. The chunks fell like mortars, gooey shrapnel splattering in all directions. A handful slashed through the pallid threads of his «Common Tunic». "Gack! Fuck!" He yanked his arm away and flattened into the tree. There went another five percent of his health. He checked his lower half; the robe bottoms he had were somehow immaculate, and this, above all things rose a wave of bile from his throat.

"I look like a fricking twat," he spat and tore at the stupid thing. He didn't even know why he put it on in the first place. Whatever armor bonus they provided wasn't worth it. He continued to yank, and the words « Are you sure you want to UNEQUIP? » blinked startlingly at him. "Yes," he said, "get this thing the hell off me." With another pull, the item came off to reveal standard video game boxers. Ten seconds later, they were replaced by the default pants offered to everyone—unless you really _did_ want to go nude. Another messy gob exploded nearby.

"God, what am I gonna do with this piece of junk?" Sho shook the robe disgustedly and flung it to the side. His eyes roved over the crawling field in front of him, and his faced dropped. "Damn it, dude. Game sense!" Of course, it was an open area. This was the hugest sign next to the fucking Nazi rallies. Open space, ample lighting, and a single landmark—another typical RPG setup. He should've seen it coming.

"Yet, I didn't," he mumbled dryly. "I walked right in, thinking, oh hey! I bet you can _totally_ do this without even checking out the area. I mean, pfft, Raiden's done it, right? And if Raiden can do it, his totally intelligent older brother can too!" Hah, right. _Obviously_. All he got now was a lot fewer options for him to screw around with. Running away in terror was looking very good, right about now. But if the explosions were any indication, he'd be sidewalk paste within ten meters. Plus, he needed that item.

So, that left backward, towards the monster.

"Still got no weapon," he reminded himself in a sarcastic, sing-song voice. "And you've run out of health potions. _Come on_ , Sho. Think your way out of this one."

He reached back into his mind, trying to recall if he was every taught anything about fighting gelatin-based creatures. Anything at all.

Video games? Uh, school books? Anything?

Blank, blank, blank blank.

Not a soul prepared a man to fight such dastardly villainy.

"I need the staff," he decided. "The staff. The staff. The staff."

Repeating that mantra over and over, Sho calmed his ringing nerves. If he can get his weapon, he could survive. Glancing up the tree, he had a wild, completely stupid idea. In any other dimension, he would've torn himself a new one for doing something so dumb. He licked his lips. Yes, this rated high on his list of all-time terrible decisions, one of which was going to that shit-show of a party. Grasping his wrist, the one that now had the « _Dislocated_ » tag attached to it, Sho pressed it against the tree trunk.

One, two— "AGH!" he screamed and twisted. The joint snapped into place, and a hot slash of agony surged up his arm. His eyes flashed black for a moment, and he could hear the shocked exclamation of an invisible crowd. His visage contorted, and he weakly clawed at the tree bark. With the single-minded focus of a beast at bay, Sho climbed.

Hands, and feet. Hands, and feet. Hands, and feet.

He reached the top of the oak, several dozen yards off the ground. It was chilly up there; wind rustled through his hair and whipped by his cheek, little happy zephyrs on their way to play. It was almost serene, but below him was the Blob. And like two mortal enemies, their eyes met. Sho's were a tired coal, barely managed calm; its were scarlet disks filled with unbridled rage. Internal programming ramped the monster's size to match that of its artificial anger. So, what once was a monster was now a twelve-foot tall behemoth. It formed a mace-like projectile in its hand, wound up, and with a resounding roar, hurled it at the opposing meat bag.

Sho jumped.

It was not fancy, no choreographed flair; it was a jump displaying extreme concentration. Lips in a line, Sho soared through the air, reached the pinnacle of his ascent, then fell, tipped headfirst towards his target. His right arm was outstretched, his breath held. He swooshed through the head of King Blob, hand immediately clasping on to his staff as he flew out the other end, thudding like a skipped rock across the ground. He bit his tongue, gashes of orange-red and microscopic shards floated from wounds on his forearms, legs, and knees. His health was at thirty-six percent.

Then, the staff-wielder stood.

He wore a crooked smile.

Sho idly spun his basic iron staff and easily sidestepped the spike that was launched his way.

"I have had it up to _here_! with gelatin. I will never _never_ eat that shit again. If I touch that driveling, distasteful abomination in the next eternity—so help me God, I will tear your amorphous collagen _butt_ into the next galaxy." The staff began to glow as he spoke, each word emphasized by a split burst of light. "I've fought wolves, I've fought fucking cauliflower—and I have fucking been in your shitty stomach. So, unless you've got another 'flavor' in that thing you call a body," Sho placed his shining blue weapon on to his shoulder. "I suggest you hurry up and try to kill me, because I have been waiting so, so long."

As if to match the meat bag's words, the King Blob transformed one of its arms into a giant cudgel. It screeched at the boy and swung. Sho did the same, both hands gripped around the lower half of his weapon. The skill « **Force of a Thousand Tons** » activated, connected, and blasted through the arm with the boom of thunder. Goo flew everywhere as Sho pivoted on his spinning foot. For a moment, he froze, and the thought of getting thoroughly flattened zipped through his mind. But, as soon as it appeared, the [ **Post Motion Delay** ] debuff vanished, and he flowed into a crouching strike at the second arm's attack. He kicked through the attack then planted his weapon into the ground and hurled himself over a tail that emerged from the Blob, whipping at the spot he was at moments before. When he landed, he flowed immediately into a butterfly twist that dodged three arrows aimed at his heart.

The King Blob roared again and its body spazzed. Sho watched it start to radiate purple light, then, from random locations on its body, tentacles shot out at him. He avoided one, ducked beneath a second, and made the mistake of rolling. The ground, which had been mowed by the blob earlier, was slippery, coated at haphazard locations with slime. "What?!" he exclaimed as his left hand slipped from position. He smashed into a puddle of ooze. "Oh, no, no no no!" he said as he flipped himself upright. A tentacle zipped towards his face, and he slapped it away. "You are _not_ going hentai on me! Fuck! Get off!" Another wrapped around his left leg. "This is not happening! I will not die like this!"

He swung at his leg, but the first tentacle had other plans. It latched on to his staff. "No, give! You piece of—" King Blob dislodged his weapon from his hands and flung it into some unknown region of the Southern Fields. Sho's eyes went wide, and his self-imposed calm began to evaporate. Grunting, he twisted on his free foot and whipped his left leg into a powerful hook kick, then continued, flipping through the air into a 360-hook. Yet the slime's appendage hung on.

"Gah, git! Off!" He went to spin again but the second tentacle was back. Striking at it with the flat of his hand, he uppercutted the limb. But as his move ended, he found himself ensnared. "Ah shit," he muttered as the King Blob rose its prey into the air and smashed him back down. Sho twisted as he went up, putting as much of the tentacles around him as possible, in a vain attempt to soften the blows.

His health bar was now flickering madly out of control. He'd dropped into the red.

"Urgh, no," was all he could manage. There came another smash, and his world suddenly became all fuzzy, like static on an old television. He watched himself, almost detached, as the King slithered a tentacle around his neck. Everything just ached, every muscle, every bone. Small squares sat to the right of his health bar, but there was no need for debuffs to debilitate the staff wielder.

He was a useless sack of meat. His eyes were half closed, part of his face was swollen. He'd lost his shoes at some time during the fight, splinters wedged into his heel, and as he was lifted into the air for the final blow, Sho could only see a blurry world before him. It was… mystifying. Beautiful. Perhaps he'd been wrong. Perhaps this world wasn't so bad. He tried to raise his hand, just enough to touch the sunlight. An echoing, rhythmic beat played.

He really did hate gelatin.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Hope you like this new chapter. We're gonna see an old character make a reappearance but in a totally different light. Tell me what you think of the revamps!**

* * *

 **Lugosi**

 **Shoichi Shin**

 **McCarthy Mansion**

Sho _really_ regretted going to that party.

There he was, at the greatest Halloween bash of the year, and the only thing he could think about was whether everyone would survive if the building spontaneously combusted. Would those makeup-suffocated students with their revealing 'sexy-this-or-that' outfits escape? Or would they suffer horrible burns due to their easy-to-melt polyester-and-nylon-infused, out-of-timeline superhero gear? Or perhaps some would retain life while others remained crippled, given the insane amount of alcohol currently being consumed. Hand-sanitizer-smelling drinks seemed to burst from their aluminum prisons and spring on to the nearest teenager, sliding down their gullet with zeal. There was enough soft liquor to make a virgin spin and enough hard water to make a veteran keel.

So Sho hid in the only logical place: the study.

It was the only room he could find that wasn't occupied by sweaty, hormonal bodies filled with uncontrollable lust or subjugated by wafts of noxious ethanol. Just like everything else in Will's mansion, the study was massive. It held floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with more knowledge than their high school library. The extravagance didn't stop there: at the center of the room sat an Arthurian round table, so littered with indecipherable engravings that Sho wondered what poor Chinese kid had to carve them. The chairs were also ancient-looking, stylized to look like a moldy, thousand-year-old tree—a literal waste of time. He was sure the city dump had nicer-looking seats. Above this assemblage hung a copper chandelier, tipped with diamond lights. It would be a gnat's heaven, were it not for the scorching heat that escaped from a nearby vent.

Asides from the table and chairs, there stood a display case to the west, filled to the brim with Will's various achievements. Sho gave them a cursory glance; the trophies ranged from primary school success in spelling, geography, and calligraphy, to high school victories at Model UNs, parliamentary debate, and a handful of trivia contests—all marked with a giant number one. A particularly large, gold-painted medal drew his eye. Leaning close, Sho read off the mini plaque screwed on to a palm-sized disk.

"For memorizing the most Pi digits."

What a useless skill.

Rolling his eyes, Sho collapsed into a plush armchair and sank into its silken embrace. It was one of four arranged throughout the room in the cardinal directions. His attention meandered for a few seconds until he landed upon the grim face of Will's great-great-grandfather, a Japanese man dressed in a crisp suit. He held his scrutiny over the book-filled room, as if he was inspecting all who dared access his wealth.

"Great, now I'm being judged by a damn painting." Sho looked away and wiggled his toes. He crossed his arms, uncrossed his legs, and sighed. Idle fingers are the devil's playground, he'd heard. Yet, even Satan himself could not combat the boredom that sank into the Shin's bones. It got so bad that he wished he'd brought along his biology packet. Anything else would have been infinitely more fun. It was not like he was in the middle of the largest collection of books outside of the city's cultural archives.

Oh wait.

Deciding, Sho stood and approached the wheeled ladder resting against the shelves. It took a moment, but he figured to stick with the holiday spirit and rolled the ladder to the east. There, he climbed halfway up and peered at a selection of Western titles. _'Frankenstein,' 'Dracula,' 'The Turn of the Screw,'_ and that movie-inspiring novel, _'It.'_

"Ah, why not," he muttered and grabbed the latter.

He slid down the ladder and found his way back to the chair. Squishing his behind within the velvety cushions, Sho got himself comfortable for a night of horror. Carefully, the first page crinkled open, and as he ran his eyes over the first line, the study door creaked ajar.

He froze, the hairs on his back upright like sentries in a stormy night. He slowly slid his gaze towards the entrance and was met by a bare back, brazenly displayed shoulders, and a bundle of honey-brown hair tumbling down over a set of curved hips. He froze, caught red-handed with the cookie jar. For a moment, he considered diving behind the trophy case. The female slowly shut the door, inch by inch turning the knob. There was the slightest _click!_ and she remained by the peephole. Good, no followers.

She backed from the door, turned around, and the boy nearly had a conniption.

"Sho?!" she said incredulously.

"Kairi," he said defeatedly.

It was like the Fates themselves made this call.

"What are _you_ doing here?" Kairi exclaimed. She circled around the chair, suspiciously checking behind him for another guy stealthily stowed within the shelves. When she saw none, she turned back to Sho. "I thought you weren't coming."

"And I thought you were shorter," he answered bluntly. He pointedly looked at the heels on her feet. "Shouldn't you be out there, amusing the masses?" He said it like it was her job, the emphasis heavy on 'the masses.' The book clapped shut and was placed on the chair's arm. "What is the star of Katta High doing, all by her lonesome? I'm sure there's some poor, unfortunate soul just _yearning_ for your… _angelic_ presence."

"As I recall it," she said, "that—was _you_." Kairi matched Sho's raised eyebrow with her own. This time, resolute in his victory, Sho maintained eye contact. His unnerving laser-focus sent a shiver down the girl's spine. She glanced away, a light blush rising on to her powdered cheeks.

"Right, because my perfectly crafted, electronic response inspired such a conclusion." Sho rolled his eyes, fingers thrumming non-stop on his thigh. "Maybe I wasn't evident. Next time—I'll use more emojis."

"I would be more inspired by monkey stenography over your abhorring abbreviations." She crossed her arms and pretended to peer into Will's past. Try as she may, she could not be rid of Sho's glare while she examined the trophy stand. Another tingle raced down her back. "Anyways, shouldn't you be out there, terrorizing citizens with your…"

"What?" he snarled.

She mildly gestured at him.

Sho was not sure how to respond to that.

As he watched, Kairi seemed to glide across the floor. She wore a violet gothic-styled dress, complete with a swallow tail, popped collar, and accompanying red floral bracelet. When she turned, mauve crystalline earrings sparkled, the heat of the fireplace reflecting off the stones. In the light, he noticed the blonde highlights that streaked through her hair, ending in eye-catching golden tips. Her face seemed to glow, almost unearthly as she elected to respond to his staring. It was a simple move: Kairi ran her tongue over her lips and moved towards the ladder, climbing up to randomly select a book at the zenith.

Sho found his throat inexplicably dry.

"Well," he sorta heard her say, "since we're both hiding from the public, why don't we discuss how I'm supposed to fish for a great white shark in the Yangtze?" Her face danced with mirth as Sho's brain blew a neuron and his entire command loop evaporated into chunks of myelinated sheaths. Somewhere in the back of his parietal, he picked up laughter. _Her_ laughter.

She was making fun of him.

"I… uh…"

"It's alright, Shoichi. There's nothing you need to say. After all, you _still_ ended up going to this party. And you _still_ ended up wearing the costume I convinced Kuzon to get you." She smirked and circled her slender, fuchsia-tipped fingers at his outfit. For the first time, he realized what he wore. Popped collar, crimson red, a matching hip long cape. Sixteenth-century-styled gothic top with a frilly bib, floral button designs, and an over-the-top lace trimming. He remembered when he first saw it. The word ' _douchebag!'_ popped unceremoniously into his mind, and Sho wasn't sure whether he loved it or wanted to incinerate it.

After all, if he really _had_ to go to a party, he reserved the right to be an absolute dick about it.

"That answers that question," he muttered and pushed himself off the chair. Inaudibly cursing his nonexistent luck, he flicked open the door and left the room, not before propping the entrance wide open, a move that only served to elicit more uproarious laughter from the girl. It was a sound halfway between a chuckle and a chortle—a chucklortle. And that odd sound, followed by her teasing, "Don't forget to try the gelatin!" tailed him out of the room and through the mansion.

After he left, and she had amply calmed herself down, Kairi Ono replaced the prop that she pulled from the shelves. She saw his book and clicked her tongue, read the title, and then inserted it back to its slot. The girl approached the trophy stand again and checked her image in one of the shinier prizes. She pulled a lipstick from within her stocking and reapplied the crimson.

"Wish I recorded that," she said, fluffing out her hair. She creased the wrinkles that inexplicably formed on her costume, fixed her smile, and convinced herself that she enjoyed the deafening EDM that was your average teenage party.

* * *

 **Floor 1**

Sho jerked awake.

Every neuron fired, a spectacular Fourth of July display of electric signaling. He was broiling, like he had a forty-two celsius fever. Drinking in the thick inkiness, fragments of memory floated inside the soupy remnants of his brain. He felt completely out of place. There was a ringing sound that seemed to emanate from somewhere in the dark. It probed him, like the soft buzzing of an alcohol-induced high—which was strange, since he'd never drunk.

"Ugh, what the hell?" he mumbled, the words tumbling out his mouth in thick, slurred syllables. He smacked his lips, and his tongue felt like he'd eaten a handful of ghost peppers and decided to forego the dairy. Inflated and tender, he wondered if it was the result of sentient gelatin exposure. As he worked his jaw into something capable of words, he sensed a movement out the corner of his eye. Immediately he sat up, and immediately, he regretted his decision. His abdomen contorted in pain, his chest constricted, and weakly, he fell back into his mattress.

Mattress?

He didn't have a mattress.

That realization forced energy back into the teen's limp, lame limbs. Sho drove himself upright, gnashing his teeth on the motionless mastication muscle, strong enough to flatten the papillae that lined it surface. His body cursed him for even thinking about moving, but if there was one thing he was excellent at—it was not listening. Finally managing to sit, he twisted his torso to the side to search for the movement. The air was still. He painfully turned to the other side. Nothing.

Maybe it was his eyes?

He squeezed them shut and reopened them. This time, a sliver of his black-covered cage cracked apart. He saw a soft, orange-yellow warmth on the other side for a split second—until it vanished, replaced by the halo of a wax candle. Its halo lit a blurry circle on its carrier: he noticed golden tips and honey-brown hair; a dull-silver chunk of a breastplate; and an arm covered by a gauntlet and rerebrace. A player cursor soon came into view.

Only to be frozen when he recognized who it was.

"Good, you're awake," Kairi said. She placed the candelabrum down on a stool next to his mattress, a discovery that Sho found to be just as shocking as the girl in front of him. Her eyes ran over his form and she clicked her tongue. "I thought you'd recover faster, given your background. That's going to make things a bit more difficult." Sho managed to raise an eyebrow at that. She ignored it and reached a hand out to gently rest it on his forehead. So shook was he that the teen could only sit there, looking like a dumbstruck virgin at the Playboy Mansion.

"Well, it doesn't look like you caught a disease, else you'd be drenched." She pried his eyelids apart, revealing the hostile onyx that stared her down. "And your vision appears intact," she said, waving a hand over his eyes. He tracked the motion easily. "That's good. The last time we fought the King Blob, three of us ended with burns and hallucinations. Here, eat this." She offered him a brownish-red rectangle. "It'll make you feel better."

He looked at it and shook his head, scrambling away from her. The surprise was now fading as his own instincts found a foothold, piercing through the daze that engulfed his mind. " _Right_ , cuz they never taught me 'stranger danger,'" he said, coughing and pounding his chest. His voice came out raspy. "You're not making me eat whatever piece of crap that is."

Kairi responded by crossing her arm. "Sho, seriously, be more mature. You just got the tar beat out of you, and if you want your energy back, I _highly_ recommend you eat something. This is a beetle-caramel bar. I bought it back in town, and it tastes exactly like Crunch. It's not poison if that's what you're worried about."

"Firstly," he said, "I hate chocolate. Secondly, I just crawled through collagen intent on tearing me limb from limb. Then you show up out of _literally_ nowhere." One of his free hands scrambled for something he could use. Kairi noticed and rolled her eyes. "Let's start with answers, you she-witch." He pointed a threatening finger, and all she did was stare at it with a ' _really?_ ' expression on her face. "Where the hell am I?"

"The Mortistry," she answered, "and if you keep that up, you'll wake the other inhabitants. And unlike me," she stood and moved the stool away from him, swiping open her menu and accessing her log of items, "they aren't nice." An old-timey lantern materialized in her hand, and she lit it with a match. Sho finally saw where the hell he was: well-built tent with thick, canvas-lined walls. His eyes narrowed slightly, and he took in the various supports that created the vertices of the rectangle, the center pole that held up the top of the tent, and the second mattress that lay parallel to his, about five feet away. There was a plate next to said mattress with a pair of chopsticks and leftover noodles. His stomach growled, which only made him crankier.

"Other inhabitants?" he snarled. "You're kidding me. Is there a reason I'm here?" His voice got louder and more irritable, and he struggled to stand to his feet, masking the rapid convulsions of his legs with his heated words.

He took a step and wobbled like the inflated body of a car sales lot dancing man. Kairi reached out to catch him, but the look he had in his eyes halted her. Don't you dare, it said, prideful with just enough venom to back up its words. Sho collapsed, and the buzzing noise in his head restarted, static from a dilapidated radio phone that some idiot kid kept insisting he could fix. It was then that Kairi saw the true extent to his wounds.

"You know," he groaned, sushi-rolling himself over on to his back. "If I die, I will personally find where you live and haunt you for the rest of your life. I—what's that smell?" He sniffed the air and then looked down at his body. "Oh… Jesus Christ. You've got to be kidding me."

Dark red lines crisscrossed over his arms and legs, tendrils from the Nile that streaked up towards his neck, pulsing red. Kairi crouched and traced one such stream till it snuck underneath his shirt and wormed its way around the back of his neck. She lifted her finger and examined it. A purplish drop of blood lay on her finger. Blood? Pus? Whatever it was, it reeked of decay and had the particularly familiar smell of vomit. She winced when she flicked the drop away and some of her health disappeared. Her flesh eroded and color drained from the edges of the wound, its center inflamed and raw.

"Butyric acid," she concluded. "They updated the monster."

"Then it wouldn't be butyric," Sho said. "It'd be butyrate. Damn programmers probably didn't take the next step for butanol and acetone creation. Anyway, you just gonna stand there and spit science nonsense, or are you gonna get me out of this shit hole?" He groaned loudly as he once again bullheadedly tried to stand up. "Great. I'm screwed, and my lifeline is a girl who runs around on her weekends doing science fairs. What are you even doing in a video game? Girls like you don't play video games. They cosplay at those kinky-ass cafes—but not video games."

"Wow. Okay, Shoichi. Okay." The sass could not be stronger right now, and Sho, inwardly, smirked at the results. "I'm sorry, _Shoichi_ , maybe a girl like me should've left you to die to a _level three_ elite mini-boss. That thing had the AI brain capacity of a wheel of cheese, and _somehow_ , you managed to get nearly killed. I should leave your presumptuous _behind_ behind. But unlike you, I'm not a jerk." She bent down and scooped up his arms, looping his left around her shoulders and sticking his other arm far from any of her areas. Sho rolled his eyes, because—yeah, that was _exactly_ what he was thinking about at a time like this.

With hurried half-steps and stunted strides, she dragged the boy out of the tent and into the dungeon. _Typical_ , Sho thought when he saw the stone, the dirt, and the four different tunnels that raced into the void. They were underground, and he had no doubt that unless they had a Amazon Echo—there was no way he could find his way out. This begged his previous question: "This your new hobby or something? Game hopping? See how the rest of us chumps do it outside of our gold-crafted world of education?"

"Sho, what are you even saying? Just because I get good grades doesn't mean I can't go and play video games." She lowered him down next to the cone-like construction that sat in a circle of pebbles and a makeshift fire that had been snuffed out. Hilt up and point embedded into the ground, there stood a normal-looking two-handed sword that the girl hefted. She wiped some debris off its blade and advanced about a meter or two out from the campsite. Standing there, she looked like a medieval sentinel, and Sho had to forcibly hold back the impressed feeling that popped into his head.

"I just find it interesting," he replied voluminously, idly poking at a bulging, poisoned vein on his quadricep. He ignored her shush. "That the most talented kid in central Japan would beta test a video game. What—was the Chess Club disbanded or something?"

Kairi sighed and continued to scan the surroundings. Sho heard and barked out a sardonic chuckle. "For all your achievements, you sure are dumb. They've already started ostracizing the betas. In a week, two? The first person to hear the fat lady crow would be you lot. Raiden's already gotten himself in some crap because he tried to play the damn hero—oh, look at me, I'm gonna go save these fucking idiots who can't tell a left chopstick from mitochondrial DNA."

"Sho, shut up," Kairi hissed. Her eyes were closed. "I'm trying to concentrate, and your blabbering isn't helping." Exhaling carefully, she tried to block out the incessant words that just seemed to fall and fall from Sho's mouth. Cocking her head, she focused on detecting anything that would alert her of the creatures she knew lurked beyond her vision. But because she just _had_ to rescue the most annoying person in Aincrad, she couldn't hear anything past his… bitching.

"What are you looking for, the Holy Grail?" His arms mimicked his mocking tone. "Hey, last I checked, King Arthur found it with his band of merry men. You should try Atlantis. That's where the trinkets are." He nodded encouragingly. "Oh yeah, and then if you're lucky, you'll find the Apple of Eden." Snort. "Kairi, there's legit nothing here." In a sing-song voice, he called into the darkness. "Hey! _Inhabitants_! Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

Okay, that was it. Kairi flung her eyes open and stormed directly towards Sho. She plunged the sword directly in front of him and gripped his shoulder, lifting the taller boy like he was a Sunday grocery bag.

When he was young, Sho used to watch Animal Planet every weekend. He remembered the closeup of the predators; there was always a fascination with the eyes. It was only now, facing her murderous, gray eyes, that he properly understood why those prey would ever fear the big bad wolf.

Sho found his throat inexplicably dry.

"Listen, _Sho_. Maybe you didn't hear me earlier, but I _saved_ you. Do you understand? I. Saved. YOU! Now normally when that happens, a person is grateful, but for the last ten minutes, you have done _nothing_ but complain and screwed around. I might have dealt with this at regionals and nationals, but you have _no idea_ what you're in for. You need my help. That's not a question; that is not a _query_ ," she mocked his sarcasm, "That is a statement. You need my help, and maybe your pride can't take it—but that is where the situation stands. Hold your tongue for just _one minute_ , and _maybe_ we can get out of here alive." Her nose flared, and Sho found that little quirk… pleasant.

"Fine, _Kairi_ ," he said dryly. "But you might want to start saving me, again." He gestured behind her, and that was when she heard the noises.

The lumbering of feet drawn across a ragged surface. Sticky clapping of teeth, stale breaths—the slobbering of a tongue. There was a lurch as something putrid careened itself towards her. Shoving Sho away, the girl yanked her sword from its perch and swung it haphazardly at the mass that moved towards them. The weapon bit into the creature, and she thrust her leg at her adversary.

 _Shiiinggg!_ Her sword freed itself and a chunk of the thing's flesh flopped to the floor. Its health dropped by about a quarter, and it clattered its jaw. The creature shambled into the light. Pale, feverish eyes hungrily fixated on the players. A single arm dangled loosely by its albino chest. It felt like ants were crawling up Sho's skin as the zombie inched closer towards them.

"We are going to talk about what you just did," she said. Her stance switched from the typical Jedi to that of the Warden: blade flat and horizontal, resting over the bent, forward presenting elbow of her left arm. She was sideways, and her transition into the stance was so smooth that Sho raised both eyebrows. She then pointed herself towards a second sound, then a third. Two more zombies stumbled out of the darkness. "Get behind me."

"No, gee, you think?" Sho matched her step for step as they backed towards the tent. The two wouldn't get far as one zombie lunged towards Kairi's right. She stabbed out her sword, moving swiftly from her stance. The blade pierced through the zombie's chest. About thirty percent of its health dropped. Then her weapon burned a bright viridian: **Rising Cleave** activated. She swung her sword upwards. It sliced the undead torso in two, rose from the head, and registered a critical hit with a giant red number in her view. The mob exploded into a million shimmering shards.

But then the other two were upon them, and she was stuck momentarily in position due to the [ **Post Motion Delay** ] of her ability. It was for a mere two seconds, but in fights—two seconds could be the difference between victory and loss. Sho intervened, spinning around the girl and ignoring the various signals of pain that zipped across his body. When the one-armed zombie swung a glowing fuschia claw at him, he slid beneath the move and straightened with a backfist towards the face. He uppercut beneath where the rib cage should be, hand forming a knife. He gripped the stack of bones and tore, flinging the monster away from Kairi.

Sho flowed immediately into a step-behind side kick and planted his foot directly into the second zombie's groin. He rose his leg up and axe-kicked down. The mob keeled over, its face smashing into the dying embers of their campfire. Kairi wasted no time in jumping forwards and jamming her sword through its neck, once again critting, and once again severing head from body. With this one dispatched, it was quick work to finish off the last zombie: Sho evaded another swipe and grabbed its one arm, pulling it towards the girl. She used another skill, **Chop** , and diagonally decapitated the dead detritivore. He, too, detonated into a cloud.

But the worst was not yet over.

From the tunnels, the two players heard flapping, followed by high-pitched tittering. Without a word, they positioned themselves back-to-back. Sho's fists were held by his face; Kairi was in her warden stance. For a short lull, they heard nothing, saw nothing, and _felt_ nothing. It was like the molecules were holding their breath, concentrating their charges. Then it happened: a deafening screech invaded their ears. Agony shattered through their auditory ossicles, reached their semicircular canals, and shredded that tympanic membrane. Their world went mute, collecting a [ **Deaf** ] debuff.

That was when it struck.

Sho saw a flash of leathery wings and claws before he was tossed into the air. He was sure he yelped, but all he felt was his mouth opening and closing. Kairi watched him whirled about like a ragdoll by a giant bat. It had fangs the size of forearms, claws curved like a scimitar, and gingantor ears. Sho scrunched up his legs and attempted to kick outwards as he fell, but the bat effortlessly weaved over him. Seconds before he hit the ground, there was a crackle of thunder and a flash. Abruptly, Sho found himself dangling in the air with a vice-like grip over his throat. His eyes rolled to the back of his head and his esophagus constricted.

The bat transformed into a white-haired male with crimson eyes and alabaster skin. He wore a collared, gothic-styled top, red with black-trimming, a pair of midnight pants; and a trench coat that gave his presence regality. Deep, rich laughter boomed from its muscular chest, biceps bulging like that of the dude at the gym who spent way too much time at the curling machine.

Kairi blanked.

She gawked, paralyzed by horror. Sho's health bar blinked distressingly at her, rapidly dropping. His helpless face imprinted itself in her brain, seared by a hot iron brand, but abated by a tiny, conspiratorial whisper. _This is his fault_ , it said insidiously, _he's the one that brought them here_. And try as she may, she couldn't shake that belief. It was only when Sho was hurled across the room did she snap out of her trance.

Kairi ran. She dropped her sword, pumped her arms, and leaped. Her « **Acrobatics** » skill slot giving her enough of a boost to reach out and snag Sho midair. Skidding, she saw a hand mark over his throat. The boy was gagging and shaking, swallowing gulps of precious oxygen. His health was about sixty percent. He weakly pointed behind her as the vampire jammed its shoulder into her body.

 _Thoompph!_

The resounding impact sent both players in different directions. Rocks and dirt dug into Kairi's limbs, and she once more slowed to a stop. Gritting her teeth, she stood. The vampire rose to his full height—a whopping one hundred and ninety-five centimeters. The name «Varendal the Voracious» appeared above a health bar, which also featured a small crown. Another elite mini-boss. She'd forgotten about this one.

"A female?" Varendal crowed. "A celebration, indeed! What brings you here, beautiful one? I have not had human flesh for some time—lest it be the undead that roams these halls."

Kairi ignored the programmed voice lines and sprinted towards her dropped sword. Varendal seemed to understand her goal and flapped his wings, giving chase. It was a brief race, but one that mattered: whether she gained the weapon would determine the fate of their lives. His hot breath was on her neck; his sickly odor penetrating her nostrils. She was five meters away, one meter, ten centimeters—

 _Almost_ …

Varendal's hand grasped her hair and wrenched her to the side. She was airborne for a split second until she was pulled backwards into his inflexible clutch. The vampire chuckled triumphantly and bared his fangs. Growling, Kairi kneed him in the groin multiple times, and twisted in his grip. The move must've struck some hidden weak point, for he howled in pain and released his grip.

"YOU DARE ASSAULT A WARRIOR FROM THE HOUSE OF MORT?!"

"House of Mort, my tushie," she muttered. With her sword now in hand, she leveled herself at her foe. "You're no warrior. You're an overgrown rodent who needs a timeout!" Back in her warden stance, Kairi felt her confidence soar. "Come and get me, Varendal."

"INSOLENCE!" he screamed and pounced at the girl.

Kairi backpedaled a half meter then thrust out her sword like before, but Varendal, more advanced than a mindless zombie, sidestepped midflight. His right fist glowed garnet, and he thunder-punched. The move traveled with the sound of a jet engine. Kairi gasped, raising the flat of her sword to block. The impact sent waves after waves of force down her arms; the knockback so immense that she rocketed about ten meters backwards, health dropping by fifteen percent. Tears erupted in her eyes, and she wanted to surrender. But, as the vampire warrior continued his assault, she clung to a memory: left, right, left, right— _pause_ —kick.

All she could do was block, and when the fourth punch came, she slid to the side. Her sword was green; **Rising Cleave** activated once more, and she counterattacked. Her blade snaked past Varendal's guard and punctured his chest. She was about to finish the combo when he took off, and she lost her sword. Illuminated like the world's largest glow stick, Varendal grasped the hilt. He roared and attempted to pull it out, but to no avail. The sword skill had triggered, and it had to be finished, no matter what.

"A CURSE UPON YOU!" Varendal screeched.

The vampire dove. Like a bullet, his hands were grasping viciously for her throat. She bent her knees and waited. _Almost_. _Almost_ … Jump! This time, she got her hands on her sword and swiftly yanked it in an arc. Her weapon rose through his chest, up his neck, and out his head. It was an instant critical, and half of Varendal's health evaporated. Orange-red shards exploded from his neck like a geyser of blood; his brain turned to goop; and both eyeballs popped out from their sockets. But, as she watched, his eyes reversed themselves, sucked back into place; the soupy gray matter reforming under his cranium to recreate the undead lord.

She didn't wait for him to be whole.

Two-handing her sword, she swung in a wide crescent, her last skill dominating the darkness with its canary glow. **Deathstroke** activated, and Kairi aimed it at the throat. True to its namesake, the skill was bounded with a special buff: should the enemy be below 50%, it would deal an instant crit. After 1 second of charging, she let it rip. The skill blasted through the putty-like image of Varendal, and his head was severed from his body. Both critical hits layered upon each other, and the mini-boss had 1 measly HP remaining. A poke would end its life.

It, however, had one last technique.

Its headless body bulldozed its way into Kairi and pinned her to the floor with its larger frame. Its hands were wrapped around her throat in a heartbeat, and before she could stop it, it constricted. Her eyes bulged, she gasped for air, and tried to pry the hands apart. But, like Sho, she was helpless against its control. Red tinged her vision as sirens blasted in her ears. Her health bar flickered in time with the alarm. They were annoying to say the least. She knew she was dying. There was no need to make such a big deal out of it.

Then, as suddenly as it occurred, the pressure around her neck stopped. She returned from Death's door with a wheeze. Her vision swam. Everything she'd eaten today decided to come up at that moment and splatter itself into any available surface. Opening her eyes, she saw Sho standing over her, her sword in his hand. He was white as a spectre.

A sea of shards surrounded them.

* * *

"Well, that was easy," Sho said raspily as he swayed in place. He let the sword fall from his hands. Looking down at Kairi, he observed the last bits of vomit exit her body. There was fury in her eyes—and a wordless accusation. Clearly, she had not forgotten about his little trick.

"What?" he said tiredly. "You gonna off me too?"

"Why?" she asked simply.

"Why what?"

"You _know_ what I'm talking about. You intentionally drew them to us." She had her hands on the sword now and pressed it into his chest. He regretted letting go of the only weapon in the entire dungeon.

"Eh, intentionally might be a strong word. Purposefully, maybe. Intentionally—no."

"You almost got us killed."

"Key word: _almost_."

The sword twisted and dug into his tunic.

"Woah, okay. I'll tell you why." He motioned around them. "Look at this place. Don't think I didn't notice the gaping hole in the ceiling. Or that rope." He pointed to said objects. "You dragged me down here— _unwillingly_. Oh sure, _thank you_ for saving me from the King Blob. I'm _sooo grateful_. But then what do you do? Throw my ass into a fucking dungeon. So here's my problem, _Kairi_ : if you're going to do something, don't half-ass it. How long were you going to stay here, waiting for the mobs to kill us? An hour? Two? And what if they didn't move? What if they just _sat there_ , waiting for us to walk by before tearing us to bits? You ever think of that?"

"I had the situation under control," she countered. "They would've passed had you not opened your big mouth. We would've never had to fight Varendal, and neither of us would've been in so much danger."

"Are you sure about that? Are you _positive_? I reek of the plague, Kairi. They would've found us anyways, and Varendal would've come. Not to _mention_ that you didn't even tell me why we're here or why my left _shoe_ is missing." He raised said foot and wiggled it. "Don't think I didn't notice that either. I'm _sorry_ if I'm suddenly doubting your ability to save me when everything is as big of a shit show as nationals. You _never_ see the big picture."

"Maybe I would see the bigger picture if I didn't have a stupid fool keeping me down! I had to coddle you, just so you wouldn't die! I would've finished this quest hours ago! The key would've been mine!"

Performing the quickest one-eighty that Kairi had ever seen, the boy turned from a vicious fountain of ridicule into a well of tranquility. His sneer was replaced by a look of curiosity, which she found to be much more suffocating than the ego that saturated the air.

"What key?" he asked.

"Nothing," she showed her back to him. "Don't worry about it."

"Don't give me that bullshit. You've been hiding things from me the moment I woke up."

"And you just manipulated me."

"Semantics." Sho approached the girl. His voice was suddenly a lot gentler, though it still held the same amount of rancor. "Look, I know you don't like me. But right now, we're stuck, and you _need me_. Tell me what the quest is, what the key is—everything. I'll help you get to the pot of gold, then, you can go back to hating my guts, and I can go back to pretending you don't exist."

Kairi took in a deep breath. She counted to three, exhaled, took in another, counted to three again, and exhaled. She then spoke. "I needed you because you aggroed the King Blob. I killed it, but it still gave you an item. I couldn't actually _steal_ it from you without it being completely obvious. So I dragged you down here and took it from your inventory."

"The fuck?" Sho said incredulously. "You little—"

"—Just listen," she said and held up a hand. "Here." She generated the item from her inventory and handed it to the boy. He quickly entered the tent and exited, lantern in hand. In the light, he saw that the item looked like a small wheel. A crimson red, intricate… gear. Yes. He could see the cogs, the nicks, and dents that he knew was an important piece to some complex device. Something seriously felt off about this, but he quickly banished the thought from his mind. There was also something about the material that he just could not place. Handing it back to the girl, he motioned for her to continue.

"That's part of a quest that spans several floors, a global quest. I never completed it during beta, but I do know the intermediaries. That gear goes inside a giant lock-and-bolt mechanism at the end of these tunnels. The last time, it was that tunnel." She pointed to the leftmost one. "It opens a door to the dungeon boss. The dungeon boss drops a key. That key unlocks a chest that grants you a weapon of choice, Cor, and a randomized piece of armor. In terms of starting items, it's probably one of the best."

"And you couldn't tell me that why?" He crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. "Fucking _enlighten_ me."

"Because you're _you_." She, again, made a vague motion at his body.

"You literally gestured to all of me."

"The point," she said with an eyeroll, "is that you would've never helped me, nor given me the gear without making a scene."

"Too late now."

"I also didn't expect you to do this quest."

"This is a quest?" Sho scrunched his brows and shrugged. "I just followed Raiden's instructions: find a white-haired NPC in Horunka and take his job. The dude told me to go south and find the tree in the middle of the field. I did, and next thing I know, you're here trying to rob me. Thanks a ton. Why would there even be a quest with such vague instructions?"

"Sho," Kairi groaned, "just stop. Just shut that annoying mouth. There are _two_ ," she held up her fingers, "white-haired NPCs in Horunka. One gives a basic collection mission—another leads to this quest. The instructions aren't ' _vague.'_ You just can't read and screwed up. _Again_."

"Great, and you're still a toxic idiot."

"I swear to God—" Kairi sighed and planted her sword into the ground. "What do I have to do to get you to shut up? Jesus." She rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Now do you get what happened? I couldn't just ask you. There was chaos in the Town of Beginnings. You were either going to be a psychopath or do something so typical that I couldn't risk it."

"You couldn't risk it?" Sho growled. "Really. Propriety just died and anarchy rose in its midst?" The teen stepped close to Kairi, planting his face inches from hers. His eyes held a dangerous gleam. "I should've known you'd do something so utterly demented. Huh," he scoffed, "maybe I should just be thankful you didn't leave me to the animals."

"Or maybe," she muttered lowly, her indignant gaze piercing his, "you should stop asking so many _fucking_ questions. I saved your life. Have some honor, and thank me."

"Go to hell."

Shoving that insolent bastard away, Kairi stormed towards the leftmost tunnel. She paced back and forth heatedly. All the while, Sho regarded her with a smug half-smirk. He started to count in his head, wondering when she'd implode. He reached fourteen when she stomped back towards him and noisily sheathed her sword. "Let's move," she said flatly. "Can you walk, or do I have to carry your sorry ass?"

"Even if I could," he said nonchalantly, "you'd better carry me. Who knows, I might break a toenail." He raised an eyebrow challengingly at her. "And wouldn't that just _suck_. Also," he pointed at his health bar. It was around fifty percent, and there was a red skull and a raindrop next to it. "I'm pretty sure that's bad. So, chop chop." He clapped his hands haughtily. "Get to it, _princess_."

"I am never saving you again," she mumbled. Looping his arm around her shoulder, she glared sideways at him. "You are utterly useless. It's just a debuff: a Tumble paired with a Fumble and off-brand Bleed. You're not going to die. Get over yourself, bozo."

"I saved your ass just now, Kairi," Sho retorted. He took a few cautious steps. "If I'm a bozo, you're a leper."

"Rude," She huffed and started hauling both of them towards the tunnel. "Why are you such a hard-ass?"

"Why are you such an idiot?"

"I'm going to drop you."

"Drop me, and I'll wake every zombie in a ten-mile radius."

"We are way past that. Plus, we're in Japan. You need to stop using imperial."

"Fine, sixteen point zero nine three four kilometers." A grin tugged at his exasperated frown. "Happy?"

"Hardly," she mimicked, stretching out the first syllable so it sounded more like 'hahd-ly.'

"I do not sound like that."

"Oh yes you do, _Shoichi_."

"I believe not, _Kairi_."

"It's Kana in here," she responded. "Call me Kana."

With a snort, Sho shook his head.

"Yeah, no. There's no way I'm calling you that."

* * *

 **A/N: Don't forget to review!**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: New chapters! Enjoy! And yes, it's been a while haha!**

* * *

 **Carcharodon Carcharias**

 **Shoichi Shin**

Sometimes, Sho wondered why he was so textbook Asian.

Naturally, the next morning after a bash like Will's, the average high school senior would be nursing a hangover, drooling somewhere in a tousled bed with a romantic other, or, if they're unlucky, in a pile of vomit. To Sho's chagrin, he was doing neither and instead rode in the educational variant of Schrodinger's Box: a school bus filled with students who may or may not be completely conscious. He'd never seen so many people pale, red-eyed, and slumped shrimp-like before, which was hilarious since several of these nerds blacked out the previous night. How they were going to stand, much less speak, was beyond him. It was biologically impossible.

Even with his aversion for school, Sho still found himself cramming for the event. A tablet was in his lap; earbuds in his ears. He scrolled through a document detailing a set of Fourier transform problems because that's exactly what cool cats did back in the day to garner international attention—math. At least the dude discovered the greenhouse effect because there was no way your boy Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier was _ever_ invited to a party.

While he griped about the Frenchman, the bus slowed to a stop in front of their destination. The waving flags of Katta High's Peregrines logo danced in the wind, a bit too energetic this early in the morning. As if to match the flying fabric, the welcoming party from Katta assembled in a row, navy blue and yellow trimmed uniforms sharply enclosing the students. Smiles were aflutter on their faces, a complete dichotomy from the cadavers on the bus. The enemy's team captain stepped forward, and Sho spotted a bundle of honey-brown hair with golden tips.

"Okay, class!" called the shrill voice of Ms. Taeyhoshi, interrupting the quiet with a rude clap of her hands. She wore her hair in a bun today, a signal of her being _absolutely serious_ for the oncoming competition. Silver-painted nails flashed gleefully, and she windmilled her arms like some sort of drugged up train conductor. "Up and at them ladies and gents! Regionals aren't going to win themselves. Come on, up up up!" Her fists pumped, and the only response was the bleak expression from a pair of onyx eyes.

The teacher forcibly stretched her smile wider to deflect the judgment that oozed from her student. "I know everyone is exhausted, but we need that energy, okay? The Peregrines are ready to greet us, and we need to respect their efforts."

"No one asked for it," Sho said lowly, and Ms. Taeyhoshi mentally noted to talk to him before the first round. After their teacher turned away to grab a clipboard and began roll call, Sho slapped the back of his hand onto his partner's face, smearing it about to awaken the dude. "Yo, get up, we're here. And drink some water. You look like you just fainted." When he got no movement, Sho jabbed his fingers into the dude's ribs. "Ayato, get up. I need you in this dimension." Rummaging in his backpack, he yanked out a plastic bag coated with condensation. Swiftly, he thrust the half-melted water bottle under Ayato's neck. The guy finally jerked upright; hands flailed about.

"Huh? What? Who—who did that?" The smirk on Sho's face told him everything, and Ayato collapsed back into his seat with a groan. "Ugh, come on Shin. You could've just shook me. I would've gotten up." The _'really?'_ look from his friend amended his statement. "Okay, okay. Not really. Gimme that bottle." He snatched the water from the snickering teen and chugged it like a marathoner. "Argh, alright. Ack. I'm good. What's going on? Did Taeyhoshi-sensei make her inspirational speech yet? We're here, aren't we?" He looked out the window.

"Yep, us and the entirety of Katta High's peanut gallery." Sho raised an eyebrow. "Dude, what are you doing?" He watched Ayato with interest as his friend furrowed his forehead, wrinkling the rye-bread skin. Seconds later, the guy triumphantly brandished his objective: a bottle of sunscreen that he lathered upon his face like a thick coating of mayonnaise. "Oh gross," Sho mumbled. "Please stop being so Japanese."

"I don't think I can," was his reply. His eyes scanned the students slowly resurrecting in their seats. "Was the Halloween party that intense?" He gently rubbed his cheeks, and Sho almost pointed to the dude's massive head. If anything needed protection, it was that dome. The thing was basically a fuzzy cue ball buzzed almost to the wood. "I actually worked. It took all day to set up the dojo to scare the neighborhood kids. All they did was drink." He snorted and gestured to Sho to hand him the tablet. "Who else was there?"

"Oh, you know," Sho said airily, "the usual. Soccer players, basketball players, baseball jocks, pong kids, gamers, rich folks, etcetera, etcetera. Oh, and a certain Kairi Ono dressed in an unironically similar costume as mine." Sho rolled his eyes and kicked his feet up against the seat in front of him. Ms. Taeyhoshi gave him a look, and in return, Sho removed one leg from the cushion. "Turns out, Kuzon conspired with her to embarrass me. Little do they know, I'm immune to any conspicuous social cues."

"Yeah, maybe," Ayato said. "You're also so smart you can't see a good thing when it happens." Sho raised both eyebrows this time, and Ayato had the urge to shake him senseless. "Shin, Ono-senpai is totally into you. Didn't you say that Kuzon-san convinced her to go to the party? And she dressed up like you, too. That's couples-level stuff. No girl does that unless they like the guy."

"Or they're unstable," Sho concluded quickly. "Really, really unstable."

"Ono-senpai is definitely not unstable."

"Yeah, okay, stop. Don't call her senpai ever again."

"She's older than me."

"So?!" Sho exclaimed. "Don't. It's gross. You're disgusting. Got off my Christian bus."

Ayato chuckled and double-tapped on a figure. "Yeah yeah, whatever you say. Hey, is it just me or is this second loop sequence redundant?" He showed the offending picture to Sho who quirked the side of his mouth in response. "Yeah, I thought so." Ayato dug into his pockets for his stylus, activated its writing mode, and quickly scribbled an edit into the margins of the digital paper. "There. Now you don't have to jump through another index check and waste processing."

"We'll fix that at the showcase," Sho replied. "The package doesn't need to be uploaded till next week. Let's get back to psychoanalyzing Kairi's gray matter." He raised a finger. "Fact one: this girl, out of nowhere mind you, decides to go to a party, just for me?" He jerked a finger to the school in front of them. He raised his hand when Ms. Taeyhoshi called his name and gathered his things. "Fact two: it took us an hour and a half to get here. Will's house is fifteen minutes from mine, which is fifteen minutes from our school. _Her house_ is eleven minutes from her school. That's over two hours—four with the round trip—just to go to a party and hang out with me. Seems overtly unstable if you ask me." Following the background commands from their teacher, he stood and moved into the aisle, walking backward to continue the debate.

"Sho," Ayato began but decided to just not. "Never mind. I don't know why she did what she did or why she would think what she thought." He hefted his backpack over his shoulders. "But you did the math. Either she came to see you, or she didn't. Besides, the buzz around school is that you got Ono-senpai alone, then wet yourself before she said a word." Ayato grinned toothily at the image of a quivering Sho. "There was another fun one about how you almost got to hold her hand, but you wussed out and hid in the bathroom."

"Oh haha. You're a real comedian." Sho made to shove Ayato, but his friend laughed and slid to the side. "Why don't you screw off and shake your head a few times, yeah? Get an answer out of that magic 8 ball of yours. It can't be worse than developing Creutzfeldt-Jakob. And before you start," Sho pointed his finger toward Ms. Taeyhoshi. "Read her textbook. Seriously, we spent weeks prepping, and you just decide to skip a third of the advanced pathology chapter." Sho kept talking while exiting the bus, "I am _not_ explaining another neurological disorder to you."

There was no response from Ayato, and Sho claimed his sweet victory. He swung himself around and hopped out the bus into the morning sunlight. There was no time to enjoy the warmth, however; the topic of their conversation stepped into his field of view. A peculiarly genuine smile radiated off her face, counteracted only by the fake ass excuses-for-smiles of her entourage. Sho spotted about four freshmen with their starry eyes aimed toward their elder and the way their dog-like expressions would bounce between her and him. The sophomores hid their displeasure with their ridiculously straight backs and tightly locked knees. The juniors—well a couple were bolder, and their rancor leaked from their eyeholes.

"Shoichi" Kairi greeted pleasantly with a curtsy. "You're awake. How… incredible."

" _Kairi_ ," Sho sneered maliciously. "You're alive. How… swell."

Students watched from the windows of the bus, and a few nudged each other, bets placed on who would crack first. It was now Kairi's follow-up salvo, but to their disappointment, there would be no further tea to be spilt. Instead, the composed female opted for a new strategy: a less confrontational approach to bend against the man she faced. She dialed her smile to a twelve. "How was your trip? I hope you're not feeling too exhausted. It would be our pleasure to convert a classroom into a break room for you."

"I'm _fine_ ," was his response. "We're all _fine_. Any more absurd questions, or can I get to thrashing your school and making you look like a degenerate?" He bounced an eyebrow and directed his glare at one of the randos in her entourage, the one that reacted at his words. Take it, his eyes said. Take the bait and see what happens.

Luckily for the dude with the bowtie and glasses, a light breeze blew across the assembly and sifted through Kairi's styled hair: waterfall braided with a bird-shaped hair clip diagonally placed above her left temple. The wind continued through her outfit, ruffling the edges of her sports jacket where a TOC pin with three one centimeter golden bars hung. She could feel his gaze meander across her for half a second before they locked themselves onto her gray eyes like he refused to acknowledge the rest of her outfit: carefully ironed navy blue dress pants, a yellow inner dress shirt, and a pair of small amber-colored earrings. Her ears were tinged red from the cold.

Sho found himself struggling to ignore them.

"It is good to have you and the…" she paused and could almost feel the annoyance rise onto his face. " _Notorious_ Mashita High students at our humble competition." She leaned into a bow, an absolutely disgusting picture of decorum and poise. "I believe you remember your way around the school, given how often you visit." That last part she said with a fractional quirk of her left eyebrow.

Sho flung his eyes wide at the insinuation. "Excuse me," he spat. "The hell does that mean?"

"Oh, nothing." That incredibly genuine smile returned on her face, and Kairi observed the intriguing way that his jawline tightened. "I was simply referring to the last three times Katta High hosted nationals, honors, I believe you remember, that is given only to the _winners_ of the regional TOC." She did not miss the brief inhale from Ayato, who, up to this point had been a statue overlooking the showdown. "But please, Shoichi-kun." And here she escalated her assault: a bold invasion of his personal space followed by the half-lidding of her eyes. Head tilted slightly upward, half a pace audaciously closer. Her left hand reached across to his right arm, and she gently tugged on the silver cufflink by his wrist.

"Do not hesitate to call me if you need help."

"Okay?~"

At that moment, Sho realized he was already losing.

Everything was in her favor. She had the home field advantage. She had loyal followers, and she somehow managed to get nature on her side. Sho figured she must have timed their arrival, knowing the reputation Ms. Taeyhoshi had for promptness. With Katta High facing due east—because they were all Japanese and that feng shui nonsense was apparently _super_ important-the sun's rays struck her directly. His words from last night returned to chomp on his glutes as her _angelic presence_ literally smacked him in the face. But, bullheaded in his absolute domination of the girl, Sho stepped a _full_ pace, and the two ended nearly touching noses. His jaw unhinged itself, ready for the return volley.

His teacher, however, sensed the nuclear fallout that was the Shin counter and interjected herself into the psychic duel between the two seniors. "Oh, Ono-San! It is so good to see you again. I see you are still the captain of your school's academic competitive team. How fortunate for you. Please, would you mind leading us through security and toward the cafeteria? We'd like to put down our things and grab some breakfast." There was that forced smile again, and for a moment, there was no answer. Then, like she was exiting a trance, Kairi focused her attention toward the teacher.

"Right. Of course, Taeyhoshi-sensei. I apologize for the delay. Please." She gestured to one of her team members, the junior with the glasses and bowtie. "Akinari-san will show you the way. Everyone else, please aid Mashita High in bringing their things." A chorus of acknowledgment followed, and the Peregrines got to work. They diligently unloaded the luggage from the bus like worker ants under the thrall of their queen. Kairi smugly brushed past Sho to assist her friends, leaving him to stand alone on the sidewalk.

He didn't speak the entire way into the school.

In terms of buildings, there wasn't much uniqueness to it. It was like every other creation with its bricks, mortar, and windows. Sho ignored the white noise of banter from his fellow academic compatriots and shifted himself into the security line at the entrance. He wordlessly lifted his arms to be patted down, fully attired in a black sports jacket and light yellow and white tie. His khaki pants upended their pockets for the metal detector. Ayato was behind him, and when they cleared, the guy tapped his shoulder. The fearsome glare Sho gave confirmed his suspicions.

"Don't you dare give me a pep talk," Sho snapped.

"I'm not. Sho—chill, okay? Play the game and win. That's all I want." Ayato glanced around and shoved his hands into his pockets. "I didn't come to miss out on weight training _and_ lose. I already owe sensei ten sets of fifty when I get back. The entire, full body workout too. Let's just go in, answer some questions, and move on to the showcase." He pointed his chin down the hallway. "That's our objective. We get up there, and we win. Easy as pie."

Sho exhaled and sneered. "What a joke man. Kairi coming out to screw with us. What the hell. I'm going to enjoy seeing her face after we tear her and her dumbass partner apart. I am not letting her win. Not again. Not for the third time running. I don't care how big her brain is."

"Just don't make a scene. We're still representing the school. If we lose, we lose graciously. If we win, we win graciously." Ayato offered his hand. He pointedly jerked his free thumb toward Taeyhoshi-senpai who was clearly giving them a wide berth. "We gotta make the school proud, not just us."

"No promises," Sho muttered darkly. He swatted away the hand. "Let's just go get those scholarships." He marched for the auditorium, replaced his grimace with a neutral smirk, and told himself that complete and utter triumph was his only option.

* * *

 **The Mortistry**

Sho stared at the creatures beneath him.

From where he stood, atop a precariously thin piece of glass, they looked like fish. Yet, the peeling skin, the red-tinted meat, and the rows of rotting, hand-length teeth placed them into a strange taxonomic category of undead sea life. They swam with undulating left-right motions, like sharks, and were outfitted with half-eaten dorsal and pectoral fins. They pushed themselves through a green liquid within the massive half spherical tank embedded into the sediment of the cave. The goop almost looked like gelatin, and the sharks were gummies within a larger mold. A neon glow reflected the way his face was paper-white.

The tunnel Kairi walked them through was longer than expected, and it gave him enough time for the DOT to wear off. His health was also back in the yellow thanks to a potion that the girl was able to spare. She'd mention something called a « **Battle Healing** » skill but that was only vaguely heard when they entered this new arena, stocked with a handful of zombies. That was, until they triggered a hidden spawn and were now flooded with the familiar clapping of teeth and hissing of sickly, stale air that threatened to destroy his barrier of ignorance. Sho knew he had to move, but there wasn't exactly a manual for this sort of work; besides, people always played zombie games like it was a massive slaughterfest, but face to face with an actual undead monster—that was another story altogether.

His legs were lead pipes welded into cement. It was only Kairi's "Oh, _come on Shoichi_!" that shocked him into activity, followed by the unmistakable _shiing!_ of her blade taking off a chunk from another lifeless husk. Said she-witch fought with a tenacity that Sho did not expect, with sass that Sho could only commend. But there was no way he was telling her that.

"Right, right," he said shakily. "I'm focusing! Calm down."

"Speak for yourself," the girl spat in reply.

Sho snarled and rubbed his eyes. He shoved the fear from his face and jogged back to the panel of levers and cranks that sat on the outskirts of the tank, situated about three feet off the ground in an outcrop of rocks. Twinkling stalagmites hung above them in standard RPG fashion with bats circling to tie the visuals into a neat bundle. He had no doubt that they were the final mechanic should the zombies fail to make him an organ donor. With no intention of becoming chum, he yanked the nearby quill off the panel and reactivated the holographic monitor, reminiscent of the player menu. Floating around him were white numbers, variables, and even an integration symbol. He flicked his quill to cross out one of the lines. Why he was doing such intensive maths in a video game, he had no idea.

A purple, glowing arrow zoomed toward his chest.

Kairi suddenly appeared in front of him, blade turned flat. She blocked the shot in midair and landed, throwing him another ferocious glare. Her sword transitioned into an overhead position and chopped down on a zombie that had strayed too close. The blow careened the creature off course, and Sho watched its nails tear through the threads of her top. A "!" blinked rapidly in her vision, warning her of the extremely low durability of the item.

"Work!" Kairi commanded. Her voice broke once more through his haze like a manager telling that dull-faced teenager to fix the rogue ice cream machine while he dealt with the rush hour line of customers. Whipping herself around, she heaved her sword in a low circle and slammed into another offending zombie. It screeched wordlessly. She growled, "Yeah yeah, scream you bots. Let me hear your agony." At that, Sho's eyebrows shot skyward. "We're hitting the third wave, and _apparently_ , they decided to bring skeletons into the mix! Do your job!" She tossed another glare at the dumbfounded boy, who resisted the urge to choke her for being such a twit.

"I am," he griped to himself. "I'm fucking doing it. But hey, what do I know about solving video game puzzles. After all, you're the expert in swordplay and zombie decapitation! Gee whiz, Kairi, as if I knew why a floor one dungeon contains a complex algorithmic problem. Come on, Shoichi." He smacked the side of his head to shake loose the cobwebs and churn the cauldron of memory. "You got this. Figure it out." Taking in a deep breath, he combated his thundering heartbeat. He examined the problem again, pushing aside his doubts and forcing motion into the quivering muscles that were his arms. The puzzle itself was so basic in its execution.

The monitor displayed the oblong shapes of the sharks. The monitor itself was a square, but it housed the circular cross-section of the tank beneath them. As the sharks moved, so did the markers, totaling to seven sharks. Each shark moved at a different rate within the circle along predetermined axes. The axes themselves were positioned so conveniently that Sho could almost see the thirty degrees tittering their impish laughter. The only hint that was given was a yellow sticky note, creased at the top right corner, attached to the panel of levers.

Sequence, it read.

"What does that even _mean_?" Sho groaned exasperatedly.

As for the levers themselves, they released food into the tank for the sharks to consume. The food either slowed or sped the sharks. Should the sharks run into each other, they would turn fuzzy with static, then reset at the edge of the circle and swim again. If they hit the edge of the tank, they would turn around and retrace their steps. Sho hesitatingly reached for the middle lever. "No that can't be it." He glanced the one to its immediate left. "Maybe… that one?"

His thoughts were interrupted by a _thump!_ followed by an extremely painful sounding scrunch.

Kairi's body was crumpled beneath his feet. Her head cracked loudly against the rocks and her arms rolled limply to her sides. Her health dipped below yellow, and he could feel the panic well up to his chest. "Kairi?! Kairi!" He hurled himself off the outcrop. "Hey, hey!" He was nearly shrieking. "Kairi! I didn't say you could sleep! Yo! Kairi! Get up!"

"Stop yelling," she replied hoarsely. "I'm okay."

A surge of relief flooded through the dude, and he nodded rapidly. "Y-yeah, yeah. You're good. Come on. Get up. They're coming." He offered her a hand that she took. "Try not to die." He looked away. "I can't concentrate with all the shards floating around."

"Haha." She pushed herself upright with a groan. "Any time now would be fantastic." She grit her teeth and hefted the two-hander. She was almost as pale as he was but for completely different reasons. A series of statuses floated beneath her health bar. "I can't fight forever," she coughed. "The spawn rates are decreasing. In three minutes, we'll have seven more. You," her hand gripped the edge of his tunic. A worm of worry dug into his liver at how weak the grip was, but he swiftly shook it off. "Need to finish the thing."

"I-I don't know _how_ ," Sho said. His pupils were dilated, his breaths short. He climbed back up the outcrop. "It doesn't make any sense. I don't—there are so many combinations. I can't just pull a lever and expect the movements to match. I've tried everything." His hands wildly gestured in the air. "I have no idea what to do. This makes _zero sense_. Each shark arrives at some random ass time to the edge. There's no pattern. Nothing to use."

He pointed to the values in the air, and Kairi spared a second to scan them. She didn't recognize any of the work he had done. The didn't match what she got. He viciously swiped through another line of math, fingers so tightly gripped upon the quill that his knuckles were white. "I literally don't _know_."

"How is that possible?" Kairi hissed. She pushed her wrist against the cavern wall and pressed down; one of the statuses cleared. "Ack, crap." Leveling her weapon at the last zombie in the current wave, she continued to speak. "How can you not know? Sho, it's _exactly_ the same problem as regionals." The zombie lunged at her and she sidestepped. The sword cleanly drove by his side before plunging itself into the back of its right knee. She aimed a kick at its groin. "Do I need to hold your hand through the stupid thing? The great—oh for Pete's sake—" The zombie latched onto her sword with an odd reaction time and wrenched her weapon from her hands. She unsheathed a newly dropped knife that was strapped to her thigh and jammed it into the back of the creature's head. "—great Shoichi Shin is giving up on a problem he _already solved_? Get over yourself!"

So vehement was the zombie that it refused to let go. Only when she twisted her knife deeper into its skull and wrenched it out did the brute finally release her. A spray of orange-red shards marred the space around her, and the undead fiend expelled its last breath. "Solve it," she commanded.

"I'm trying, okay?! I am! It's way harder than it looks! Maybe if I reverse it. Like a… a reverse code. You know—just run the algorithms backward. Y-yeah, that could work." His palm rested upon the far left lever until Kairi angrily shook her head and scared it away.

"It isn't. I tried that. How did you do it before? _Think_ Sho. Use that massive brain of yours for something useful. Is it that one?" She stabbed her weapon toward the far right lever. "Is that the first one?"

"No. Yes? I don't know!" The panic was returning with a vengeance. The tips of his fingers were shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. He scrunched his eyebrows and searched his mind. Yes, she was right. It was exactly like regionals, except this time, they actually did have a time limit. "I can't remember. Maybe?"

"Oh for God's sake! SHO! It's been like a year!"

"A lot happened in that year," he said, head now in his arms, elbows bent on the panel. His thumbs scratched at the bottoms of his eyes. "You know this! There was a lot going on." He looked up at her with something strange in his eyes.

"You can't blame me for not remembering."

"What do you mean!" she screamed exasperatedly. "Don't tell me your memory cuts off at the one year mark! There's no way your memory is that trash!"

"LOOK! Maybe I would remember it if I had actually SOLVED IT, OKAY!?"

His teeth were bared, and spittle flew from his lips.

"I didn't fucking solve it, Kairi!" he continued. "You _know_ this." He jabbed his fist into his chest. "I didn't do _anything_. I spent the entire time sitting there, running through fucking calculations that amounted to nothing! Nothing! All my answers were wrong! And then—" His finger pointed to his left, and for a moment, he met eyes with someone invisible. When he blinked, they were gone. "Nothing worked, and the sooner you get that through your braindead head, the sooner you'll see just how _screwed_ we are." He inhaled sharply and put his hands behind his neck, woven tightly.

It was the third time Kairi has seen Sho like this. Oh, he had outbursts; he had phenomenally famous outbursts, but those all arose with heavy doses of sarcasm like the guy couldn't get enough of the high. This one was new. The discontent was still there, but there was a new layer of vulnerability that she wanted to unravel. She wanted to tug on that string until he devolved into a mess of yarn and frays, revealing what kind of man Shoichi Shin really was. But Kairi wasn't having any of it.

Not now anyway.

"Dude, we are about to get killed. I'm going to _need you_ to pick up your mess and figure this thing out." She replaced her knife and gathered her primary weapon. Sliding back into her warden stance, the girl moved up the outcrop to stand by Shoichi. "I don't want to regret saving you."

And with those words, the tornado of emotions vanished, whiffed out of existence by a snap. Something seemed to register inside of Sho, and his entire face morphed. Everything became neutral: neutral smile, neutral body language, and even the way he picked up the quill, without your traditional Asian-cool-nerd, debate-student-pencil-twirl, was so shockingly average that Kairi wasn't sure if she was looking at Sho or somebody's rendition of the most mundane student on the planet.

"I'm _fine_ ," he said. "We're all _fine_."

* * *

 **A/N: Please review! Any comments would be appreciated! :)**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Continuation from the last chapter! Enjoy!**

* * *

 **Cyprinoid**

 **Shoichi Shin**

 **Katta High**

Sho figured if there was a perfect place to thrash Kairi at a publicized tournament, it was definitely an auditorium.

He stood on stage, eyes cast over the expanse of seats, capable of holding a maximum of four hundred people plus an additional hundred, he guessed, if they locked themselves tightly together like Legos. He shielded his eyes against the barndoors which currently had the color scrollers on a soft, yellow-white light aimed at the sixteen podiums arranged in a two-by-eight pattern. Each podium was assigned to a school, drawn from the surrounding Tokyo area. Each proudly flew their colors, and it was the yellow, white, and blue one that Sho returned to. His right hand brushed over the singular red button on the wooden surface, their buzzer for the first round.

Distractedly, he fiddled with the flexible mic that extended from the front of the podium. He squeezed the fuzzy windscreen a couple of times and thrummed his fingers on his thighs. To stage left, Ayato was talking to the event coordinators to learn about the rules and retrieve their clip-on mics. This was the eight-ball's first TOC, so Sho let him get all the curiosity and excitement out of his system. He, on the other hand, was fighting off alternating bouts of boredom and trying to guess how long it would take for Will to hurl every time he scrunched his eyes or grabbed his temples. Sho had spotted the gelled mass of brownish-black hair—the classic mid-fade side trim with textured, front-facing spiked crop—enter about forty-five minutes late, say something to Ms. Taeyhoshi, then got sent to the bench and replaced by some green-gilled freshman.

Said freshman trotted over to Sho and handed him a clip-on.

"Here you go Shin-senpai," he said and only got a narrowing of Sho's eyebrows as a response. The dude sheepishly scratched the back of his neck, picking at a mole the 'senpai' had noticed earlier. It had a rather obscene hair protruding from its center. "I know I'm not the first choice, but I promise you that I'll make you and Shimizu-senpai proud." He smiled congenially, and Sho resisted the urge to gag. The senior turned his face to avoid looking at whatever the hell _that_ was in front of him.

The freshie looked like a cross between a bewildered lemur and a sagging puffer fish, hair split into ears on both sides of his head. Sho shifted himself to further avoid the bulging, fish-like eyes, short and membrane-thin eyebrows, and a nose that was literally concave. Sho knew it was basically impossible, but he felt like he could stick a quarter into that bridge of a nose and candy would pop out. Speaking of candy, Sho glanced at that tub of a stomach and really wanted to donate the dude a nutrition book.

The guy clumsily adjusted his clip-on, which reverberated scratching noises across the room. A few eyes from some of the southern schools stared at them. Sho purposefully took a hard right to avoid being thought of within the same neuronal firing sequence as Bunko Bankan, the freshman who thought it was a _brilliant_ idea to dress as a rotund Ferrero Rocher in a ghastly bronze dress suit and uncoordinated black, wide-fit derby shoes. Ayato saw Sho roam away and strolled over. "Hey, where you headed to?" he asked. "We're about to begin."

"I'm trying not to get eaten," Sho said dryly. He jerked a thumb at Bunko. "Why do we have that idiot as a sub? I'd honestly take a hammered Will over that moron any day of the lunar calendar." He shook his head and grimaced. "If Jesus Christ himself was here, he would get right off the cross and go to the casinos in Cairo, just so he could avoid saving that idiot's sins. I mean _look_ at him."

The upperclassmen turned to watch the calamity unfold.

In the struggle between dark and light, none could compare to the clash between the audio wire and transmitter pack. One fought vehemently to attach itself to the back of Bunko's belt, a victory that would claim insurmountable wealth to the data-driven world of Transmittia. On the other hand, the occupants of Auditorio battled tooth and nail to reclaim their long-lost home around Bunko's neck. The war was bloody; the campaign long—an entire minute and a half past before Auditorio surrendered, snapping at the center of the wire with a _piit!_ Bits of copper were the remnants of the kingdom's brave soldiers.

"Oh poop," Bunko frowned. He wasn't exactly sure he had the cash for that.

"See?!" Sho hissed. "See?!" He thrust both of his hands at Bunko, because one simply could not express the utter disdain that littered his face. "The dude is actually the equivalent of a lump of bread. I'm not talking about banana bread, or sourdough, or even fucking _rye bread_. No, no," he turned and grabbed both of his friend's shoulders. Ayato shrugged him off before he could dig his nails into the guy's new sports jacket. "He is _literally_ a week's old, fermented, _E. coli_ _infested_ brick of whole grain. An actual loaf of _toast_ would be a better sub than him."

"Shin, come on," Ayato said. He roughly shoved Sho away and jabbed a finger into his friend's chest. "Try and be respectful. He's still on our team, and I don't know if McCarthy-san would be able to answer any questions with a hangover." Sho rolled his eyes, and Ayato frowned even further. "He's our teammate, man." To emphasize his words, he walked over to Bunko and offered a hand. "I have you covered. There's some tape in my bag."

"You carry tape in your bag?" Bunko blinked owlishly. He stared at Ayato reverently. "Woah."

"Of course he carries tape in his bag," Sho mumbled sarcastically. " _Of course_ he does."

He watched Ayato and Bunko retreat backstage and pressed his lips into a line. He searched his brain for a path out of this predicament. He could fake his death, but that would require way too much ketchup, and ain't nobody got time for that. Besides, there really wasn't much he could do now that the sub was registered with the TOC admins. His best bet was to steeple his hands and pray for a miracle. Their chances of winning the first round went from one thousand percent to one _thousandth_ of a percent. It was like the equivalent of trading Thor for a toddler with a Nerf sword. The equivalent of trading a tank for a firecracker. Trading spinach for cauliflower.

ORANGE JUICE FOR APPLE JUICE!

And Lord help the fool that took that deal.

Fortunately, Sho didn't have any more time to lament his misery. A disembodied voice announced the start of the competition in five minutes. He returned to his seat and shoved his hands into his pockets, nonchalantly leaning his chair back on its to hind legs. One foot was kicked up against the podium while the other rested flat on the ground. He rocked to and fro for a few seconds before he caught his teacher's gaze. She settled into the seats with a couple of Mishita students, those who got a bi in the other minor competitions, the ones that didn't offer full rides or eighty percent off your college tuition. The scraps, he'd called them back in the classroom, and Ms. Taeyhoshi had to calm down the other students before a riot could break out.

It was Ayato who batted his leg off the podium, not the disapproving looks he received.

Bunko and him sat to the left of Sho, the first of which had a rather discrete bundle of black tape wrapped around the wire wound. The light was green on the transmitter, and the antennas poked out of his front pocket like mischievous garden eels. The latter had a laptop on his knees, which he quickly settled to the right of the buzzer button and gestured for Sho to enter their school's login info. The device was no doubt rigged with all sorts of programs for the upcoming matches. After Sho finished, he stretched his back and prepared for the usual fifteen minutes of introduction and paparazzi; the lightning bugs of camera flashes attempted to catch their every expression. He let Bunko bumble through Mishita High's opening salutations because their teacher had made it plenty clear that he was not to speak unless it was to answer a question.

Then, the tournament was underway.

The first round was a weeding round based off points. There was a cutoff threshold of fifty points, and the first eight teams to reach that amount would proceed. Mishita High planned to pull a huge lead in the first round, since there was technically no time limit, and establish themselves well ahead of the pack before round two. Sho remembered calling the ability useless, but he really could use Will's three hundred and fourteen pi digits right about now. He doubted Bunko knew more than, like, ten digits—eleven and a half when the boy was fully fed.

Round one passed, and Mishita finished with a measly ten-point lead ahead of the Peregrines. Even Bunko wasn't so thick-headed as to miss the irritation that cascaded off Sho. The second round was another trivia round, except this time, it was a lightning phase: one minute on the clock, answer as many questions as possible. The top four teams would prevail regardless of points. Again, it was the upperclassmen who carried poor Bunko through the round, though he did come in clutch a couple of times to save them on the astronomy questions; the ones that Sho was notoriously ignorant of.

Like that one about the Crux constellation and its area in the sky.

Next was the short answer submission round that Bunko was essentially useless in. He could only watch and pretend he didn't see Shin-senpai pretend he didn't exist. There was a lot of that going around, and he wondered why Taeyhoshi-sensei put him on the team in the first place. There were plenty of people more qualified. Still, he tried to participate, even if Sho's mumblings about whether he was a human being did hurt a bit. The freshman fought back the emotions but couldn't fully hide the redness from surrounding his hazelnut eyes. This only served to sour Shin-senpai a couple more magnitudes.

"Work below," Sho said curtly to the current judge. "Seven point nine five kiloohms."

"Is that your final—" the official began, and Sho instantly cut him off.

"Duh."

The man hesitated at the brazen attitude and glanced at his fellow judges. Seeing this, Sho rudely added an "It's _right_ " and dared them to question him, a scowl that could curdle dairy on his lips. The judge now regretted volunteering for the event. He was just an elementary school teacher in a decently conservative sector of Tokyo. He wasn't used to such open defiance, and the senior before him seemed to know. The student rotated his wrists in a 'let's go, we don't have all day' motion for them to continue. The judge cleared his throat and slightly inclined his head.

"Correct."

 _Obviously_ , Sho said with an exasperated exhale.

Finally, it was time for the break. Sho didn't bother eating. He was too antsy to eat and paced around the circular table reserved for Mishita High in the cafeteria. No one addressed him, not even Ayato. Thirty minutes of mild banter and silence passed, and it was time for finals. It wasn't really a shock to anyone who the two schools were: Mishita High sat to stage left, audience right, and Katta High sat opposite of them. The auditorium was packed now as the scraps had ended in time for the showdown. The audience booed obnoxiously when Sho and Ayato took the stage. Because he was Sho, he decided to throw a cocky smirk on his face and stack his feet onto the table and squish his bottom into the hard wooden chairs, noisily slurping on a bottle of water he grabbed on the way onto the stage.

"Shin," Ayato whispered and attempted to snatch the bottle. Sho only twisted to the side and increased his boorish inhale of hydrogen dioxide. "Oh, kuyashii. I told you. Don't make a scene."

"I'm not," Sho answered smugly. "I'm drinking water."

"You're being an asshole," Ayato insisted.

"Nope, I'm staying hydrated."

Further words were halted upon the entrance of Katta High. The crowd went berserk when Kairi and her partner were the first to be introduced as the defending champions. Cameras snapped the pristine moment, catching many angles of the magnificent specimen in front of them. Wouldn't they just _love_ to stuff her in a box somewhere and admire her all day, Sho thought sarcastically. She would look just _swell_ on a shelf, on a pedestal, hell, maybe embossed in stone relief. Everyone expected Ono-chan—as the student commentators so adoringly called her—to take home another victory. Simply hearing that sent ripples of displeasure across Sho, evident by the nonstop thrumming of both hands on his thighs.

The pre-game interview was conducted by that same sorry excuse for an elementary teacher, and Sho decided to ignore anything that was said. Ayato listened intently for any trash talk that might be directed at them, but he found Kairi to be extremely professional, only addressing them with honorifics and outright evading the question about her opinions on her rival. Soon it was their turn, and like they doubly promised to Ms. Taeyhoshi before the start of this round—Sho didn't say a word.

The problem was soon presented to them. It was dubbed 'The Minnow Problem,' and the setup was like so: seven minnows swam in a sphere that sat within a cubical tank. They swam at different rates, moved on different sets of x-axes, and should the minnows run into each other, they would hurry back to the edge of the tank and restart their swimming. The animation on their laptops represented the minnows as red-colored dots, the sphere as a black circle, and the tank as a blue square, all presented on a GUI that Ayato recognized was coded through MATLAB II. There were fourteen buttons across the top of the GUI, two for each minnow. One sped, one slowed. Five minutes were given to each team read and clarify the problem with the judges. Then the timer would begin, and they would have thirty minutes to solve it. The goal was to sequentially move all the minnows to the edge of the tank and back again. Direction around the circle did not matter.

Kairi and Sho were veterans in the finals, so they knew the meta: while their partners fully utilized the five minutes of question time, they would begin the basic calculations. That banked them a bonus ten minutes of time since both teams were expected to do the same. This year, however, Sho chose otherwise, and when it was their turn to question the judges, he briefly said, "No questions," and threw a grin at the girl. Her jaw dropped about five millimeters before she controlled herself and returned his grin with a coquettish simper.

The two teams started similarly. First, they had to find the distances between the minnows and the distances that the minnows traveled. That was rather easy, and a handful of lines of code revealed the thirty degrees spaced between the minnows along with the matrix of distances, based off the Cartesian coordinates and distance formula. They found velocity next by creating a time vector and defining the start as the black pixel that the red dot touched and retrieving the index value for when the first and second crossing occurred. The index distance between them was delta time. Distance over time equals velocity. From here, it was a simple matter of running the program after a food button was pressed, and they found that the increase and decrease in speed were the same.

Here, the two schools differed their methods. Kairi created a list of the most commonly thought of sequences and methodically went down that list. She dictated to her partner which button to press with an alphanumeric system for each of the fourteen buttons. Each new iteration they ran through, she had another set of code for the junior with the bowtie to program. Fibonacci, figurate series like the square, triangle, and hexagonal series. She tried the Lazy Caterer's sequence and the Master Chef's Magic Square sequence. Her partner suggested Catalan, and she swiftly churned out the code. That one also didn't work. She even went as far as five minutes along the Sieve of Eratosthenes but to no avail.

Sho had a completely different approach.

Rather, he worked independently from Ayato, and the two would alternate entering solutions into the laptop whenever they thought of something. It was hectic with all the hands, but the two were agile and effectively worked around each other. Instead of drawing from common sequences, Sho created an array and scanned through the packages that MATLAB contained. He ran the solvers, the presets, and even tried an FFT. Nothing worked as none of the values corresponded with any of the lever values. He recalled that biologically, most creatures fell under a bell curve, so he gathered the speeds and coordinates to create a self-updating histogram. That too failed; it fluctuated between bimodal, skewed, and came nowhere close to being normal. Even bootstrapping it did not seem to generate anything useful. Then a thought struck him: maybe it had nothing to do with science and followed something more pertinent, perhaps an economic model. He knew of two, so he tried both; the classic supply and demand model fell instantly flat, and the Production Possibility Frontier model made no sense at all, so he tossed it.

It was at the ten-minute mark when the two partners decided to speak to each other. Sho discarded his seventh sheet of paper and Ayato was still on his first. He almost snorted when he saw only a few lines written but didn't say anything. His mind had resettled back to science and focused on a particularly complex algorithm involving serializing the heat equation. His thoughts were interrupted by a poke in his ribs from Ayato. "What?" Sho whispered, irked. "I'm busy. Did you get something?"

"Maybe," Ayato mused slowly. "Why are there seven minnows?" He pointed to the animation. "Why aren't there six?"

"What?" Sho scrunched his forehead. "I don't know. Maybe there are seven terms."

"No," Ayato argued. "That can't be it. Look." He quickly drew a circle and its diameter. "We already know the minnows are swimming in thirty-degree increments, so why seven? Why not six? It would have been infinitely easier for us to solve, and that way," here he ticked off the upper half of the circle into even increments, "you get this. So where does this last one go?" He pointed to the slowest minnow on the screen lagging behind its friends. "And why did they decide to make it the only one running at twenty percent the speed of the others?"

"Cuz it's braindead?" Sho retorted impetuously. "What's the point?"

"I think we're not looking for a series—or even an equation." Ayato dropped his hand on Sho's shoulder when he got no reaction. His friend's onyx eyes were trained on the mathematical hieroglyphs on his paper. "Man pay attention. Look. It has to do with this minnow." He poked the laptop screen and ignored the 'You break it you pay it' that followed. His finger traced the path the fish took. "The seventh one. The slow one. It's trying to tell us something."

"Yeah, that we're gullible for falling for such an obvious red herring." Sho shrugged and continued to write. "Whatever, dude. It probably doesn't matter. These problems are all multivariable or linear algebra anyway. It's been like that for the last three years. There's no reason for them to just suddenly veer from that pattern. Besides, all we need to do is figure out the overarching scheme for the first three minnows, and the last one will fit. That's literally why statistics can be run on trials of n equals three."

"How can you predict that and say that my thing doesn't matter? You're just guessing based on human behavior and what happened in the past. That's not something you can conclude. Every year it's been a brand-new problem."

"Yeah, but every year, the answer came out with the same set of properties: multivariate, some sciency aspect, and a whole lot of coding. Just forget it. Stop wasting time and help me program this equation." He pushed his sheet over to Ayato, already banishing the theory from his mind.

"Sho, I'm telling you. The fish is the key." His response was a pointed bouncing of Sho's eyes from the paper to the PC then back to the paper again. "I'm not programming that." The whispers were now frantic as the black-haired teen before him cursed at him and jerked the laptop over to his side of the table. "You've got to listen to me man. We have five damn minutes! Dude!" Ayato poked Sho in the side again with his pencil. "Listen to me!"

"And waste five minutes for some bullshit that doesn't even make sense?" Sho said sardonically. "As if. You want to solve it that way, be my damn guest. Hey, why does it matter right? A full ride-pfft, anyone can get one of those. It's _finnneee_. It's not like I wasn't already handicapped by the fucking oompa loompa. Cut off my other leg why don't you." He furiously typed on the laptop, estimating that if this failed, he would have maybe three minutes to work on that Fourier he abandoned earlier.

"Jesus," Ayato growled. "You never fucking listen. You always get like this."

"Yeah? Fucking cry about it." Sho finished typing and waited for the outputs. He auspiciously got whole numbers this time and hurriedly returned to the GUI to enter the values. An error showed on his screen, and Sho bristled with annoyance. He took the absolute value of the solutions and still got nothing. "For the love of Buddha," he muttered, "fuck!" He grabbed his fifth sheet and rushed to try his last solution, the stress gnawing at his innards.

Ayato fixated his verdant eyes back on his drawing. Sho could be right, he thought. Or he was Goddamn asshat that doesn't give a shit about what you think, the other side breathed darkly into his ear. Your opinion doesn't matter to him. You're not smart enough. You're just another _retard_ for him to replace, just like Bunko. The swirling thoughts kept coming, a python that constricted itself around his mind. They jeered and danced like imps on the grave that was his self-esteem. You're not good enough. Not smart enough. He just pities you.

If Ty wasn't sick, you wouldn't even be here.

He resisted against the boa, but the resentment bubbled into lava up his chest. His fists clenched roughly on his pencil, and it was a wonder that it only snapped and didn't explode into splinters. The eraser end of it ricocheted of the laptop and clattered to the floor. Ayato froze. The laptop was unattended. Sho was still writing. The judge called the one-minute mark. The round was going to end, and the weeks upon weeks of preparation were going to evaporate like morning mist. He wasn't going to let that happen.

His eyes locked onto the circle.

Seven minnows. Thirty degrees. A circle inside a square and a break in the pattern. A break in the pattern. Seven minnows. Thirty. Circle in square. Break in pattern. Break. Seven, thirty. Circle in square.

Circle.

Square.

"It looks like a safe," Ayato realized.

Fourteen buttons.

"I'm so dumb."

It was a code. A _lock_ code. The minnows weren't minnows. They were the tumblers and gears within the lock. There were confused, _scrambled_ , and reordering them was the same as twisting the dial correctly to open the safe. That was the _sequence_. The seventh minnow wasn't the red herring, it was the entire fucking problem! The speeds, the axes, the way each minnow would reset if it bumped into its friend or turned around at the tank's edge. None of that mattered. But what were the values? How many times did he spin?

Ayato watched the seventh minnow struggle to follow its friends.

It ran at the thirty-degree mark.

What if it didn't have anything to do with degrees? What if it was—?

"Radians."

His hands flew across the laptop.

* * *

 **The Mortistry**

Sho remembered now.

Maybe he'd always remembered and just refused to out of spite. He wasn't sure.

There was a sequence of memories that flashed through his mind. Disjointed pieces of the past stitched themselves into a flipbook until, looking to his left, he could almost see Ayato. The man's concentrated eyes locked onto an invisible monitor, fingers poised. Then he saw the baldie's steady hands descend and type, which Sho matched with his own trembling hands to yank on the levers.

 _Clank! Clunk! Clunk!_

Hisses followed each other one after another and food was released into the tank. The sharks sped after them and as the correct sequence was inputted, they pushed themselves into the aquarium walls to still like docked ships. A light ignited under the glass piece Kairi stood on and the undead creatures she was fighting dissolved into blue fragments. Sho heard her ragged breath heave from her chest and saw a grin emerge, followed by a short, pained grunt.

"Finally," she huffed. "I was _this close_ to turning you into takoyaki." She chuckled roughly and clutched her side. "Damn it." A reddish-orange gash ran vertically down her ribs and dripped shards. "Argh, Kayaba overdid it with the bleed damage." Touching the wound, she hissed. "God! Jesus effing!" Her swear words were cut short when she saw Sho's raised eyebrow. "You know what I mean," she muttered and glanced to the side. "Let's just get out of here."

Sho agreed though he felt—off. That neutral smile that he had remained, but there was something unsettling that developed in his stomach. It wormed its way around with malice. It was gray, pale and green, black and sickly yellow. That feeling clamped on his intestines and wrapped around his throat. A shimmering portal appeared before them and his feet robotically pushed him forward. A sense of nausea washed over him as something stirred within his memories. He instinctively tried to ignore it, but, as his vision turned white once more, he knew something was incredibly wrong.

And for some reason, he and Kairi were at the center of it.

* * *

 **A/N: Please review! Any comments would be appreciated! :)**


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: Hey guys, been a while, but I'm still here and I'm back with an edited chapter 5 and fix to the arc/problems that I was notified about earlier. Sorry, it's been a while. College and life are super rough right now. BUT, that aside, please enjoy the chapter.**

 **Don't forget to review!**

* * *

 **Limelight**

 **Kairi Ono**

 **Katta High Ballroom**

An entire day of intense competition had passed, and Kairi should've been allowed to leave. Instead, she was thrust back into the limelight by a crowd of pushing and shouting reporters. News of the "Mishita upset" must have reached the local news and beyond because she was swarmed like a lamp post on a humid summer night. Sweat fresh from the burning Japanese sun made her noxious, the odor a suffocating haze.

She stood at the front of a ballroom. Lights and invisible air bubble texts formed loud words crowding around her as if she was at the Grand Exchange. Defeat settled heavily on her mind, and the only thing she could think of was how she didn't finish the problem. The words "I can't believe it" involuntarily escaped her lips. Confused faces and further battering questions rained upon her the instant she showed weakness. On instinct, she dialed her smile back to its usual eleven and fluttered her eyelashes at the reporters.

"The victory from Mishita High, I mean."

"What does that mean, Miss Ono-san?"

It had been a mediocre response, enough to feed the beasts, but not enough to sound utterly pathetic. Kairi bit her tongue and crossed her arms behind her back. Her right thumb and forefinger tightly gripped her dress jacket's left sleeve. Her shoulders straightened and her back arched, forcing some coherency into her follow-up answer.

"Shoichi is a difficult individual to cooperate with," she said, "and while Ayato is one of his only friends, I didn't expect his recruitment to result in today's success. But, it is understandable. Shoichi is no longer paired with his previous partner. We all remember the arguments they had before _and during_ the previous three tournaments."

A chorus of agreement and chuckles followed.

"Therefore," she continued, "I believe wholeheartedly that they deserved this victory."

This last part she addressed to the original reporter whose next question, she anticipated, was on the tip of the woman's tongue. Still, the lady didn't seem satisfied and was upon Kairi once more, saying "Miss Ono-san, Miss Ono-san!" Another reporter jostled the woman aside and jammed a microphone under Kairi's chin. "Do you think this victory from Mishita High and Shoichi Shin guarantees that they'll secure the national championship? Even with your guaranteed invitation as runner-up?"

Runner up?

Kairi almost snorted. Right, because her performance was even worthy of that invitation. Her eyes, however, remained steady on the reporter even as her left sleeve was stretching dangerously far. "I wish Shoichi Shin and Ayato Shimizu the best for nationals. Should they carry their performance like they did today, I think they are strong contenders for victory." She bowed after and got a sudden standing ovation. After all, that was what they expected, wasn't it?

Collected, modest, and perfectly poised.

Those were the hallmarks of the Kairi Ono brand. There were shouts for more, like how she planned to defeat Sho, or how she would reply to the trash-talking that everyone knew was bound to happen. She was their town's headline, another big story from their prefecture's largest rivalry. Even international broadcasts would catch sound bites later in the week. One side had infinite grace, the other with incessant crudeness.

It made great television.

It made Kairi sick.

"Miss Ono-san! Over here!"

Another reporter waved his hand and she nodded at him, watching him scramble over. "Right, uh, okay, so firstly—congrats!" He tore through his notebook to an empty page. "Congratulations on the second place. I know you worked very, very hard to make it this far, so, uh, yeah. Congrats. Again." She smiled at the eager guy and noticed the intern tag from the town's news station. The poor dude was probably only a year or two older than her. A stray hair floated over her left eye and she daintily brushed it aside.

"Thank you so much for your support," she said coyly. "That means a lot."

The intern flushed red and rapidly nodded. He scribbled something with stenography then followed his praise with a question. "I wanted to know what went through your mind during the final problem. The judges have not released any details. As they shouldn't! Of course." He corrected himself sheepishly. "Because of the rules and, uh, stuff." She nodded for him to finish. "I just wanted to know if there was anything specific you would like to share. What went wrong?" The microphone returned to her lips and she ground her teeth to stop herself from scoffing.

What went wrong? Was that a sick joke?

Her nails dug into her left sleeve.

She needed to come up with something smart, quick. In those few seconds, her smile momentarily slipped and revealed her downcast look. The intern balked at the expression and seeing his reaction, she fixed the smile as best she could and said: "I believe that our method to solve the problem was not correct. We picked one method while the problem needed another method. I think it was largely my narrow mindedness that held me back. The style and difficulty of the problem were also extremely tricky. I promise that next time, I will perform much better so as not to disappoint my school, my friends, and my family."

She finished the part evasive, part honest answer, and the intern ate it like soup. "Wow," he gasped, probably not entirely of his free will either. Kairi had strolled ahead as she talked and stopped directly in the most perfect spot for an impromptu photoshoot. With her formal attire and the light that flooded through the windows that formed the ceiling of the ballroom, she looked stunning and absolutely knew it. Even the intern was distracted and his camera snapped her image. Briefly, she relaxed then steeled herself for more. These questions were standard given the situation. There was still one more topic she knew was incoming.

As if her thoughts were enough to conjure it, the intern lowered his camera. "Speaking of your family," the guy suddenly held a sly smirk on his face. "With this, uh, _unfortunate_ loss, how would your parents react to your… invitation... to your final national TOC? What do you have to say to your father? To your late mother?"

This time, she bit her tongue.

"I…" she began but trailed off. The intern's words had managed to form a heavy lump in her throat. She broke her confident eye contact and looked away. Her father, she thought. "I…" Her mother. "I…" Anything she could think of would sound fake. Nothing could change what she had done. Gritting her teeth, she dragged a pre-written script from her memories in front of her eyes. Without focusing on anyone, in particular, she read the words line by line.

"I hope they're proud." The smile on her face struggled to become even brighter. "I'd like to dedicate my work to them. If I can alleviate any burdens with these scholarships and victories, no matter how small, I will gladly take on another dozen impossible puzzles before giving up. Thank you for supporting me!" She finished with a deep bow and hid the tears that threatened the edges of her eyes.

"Now if you'll excuse me," she said. "I need to get ready for the party."

The reporters clamored over themselves to reach and question her, but she barreled her way past them toward a door to the back of the ballroom where the rest of the competitors were getting ready for the traditional dance and social that ended every TOC event. She shoved her way through the door and slid it shut, ignoring the looks of surprise from the handful of people who were there early. She held her head low and just focused on her feet. A student from her school called her name. Another mentioned that Akinari was looking for her. "Tell him I'm getting my yukata," she replied softly and kept going until she reached the storage area.

It was a room that held a set of steel cages corresponding to each school. There was a lock on each. Kairi sprinted the remaining distance and grasped it like a lifeline. Her breath was ragged; the veneer she held dissolved, and she slumped in front of the cage door. A shaky breath rocked her frame, and her right hand again went to her left sleeve. A bit of snot dribbled down her nose, and she sniffed.

She wanted to go home.

She'd be safe there, cuddled with her stuffies, warmly hidden under layers of blankets and pillows. She was exhausted. The waterworks were bound to come, and Kairi tried her best to refute them by kneading her face. All she got for her efforts were more tears.

"You're actually wasting so much enzymes right now," a dry voice said.

She hiccuped, gasped, giggled? She wasn't sure, but a weird noise came out, and her first response was to correct the guy's grammar, thinking that Akinari had finally found her. "Many," she said hoarsely and accepted a yellow tissue. The wry smile that emerged on her visitor's face was completely missed as Kairi blew her nose.

"Riiggghhhhttt," the man said, dragging the word out in a grating tone, "because that's what we should be talking about right now. Grammar and its ever-important contribution to the literary world. At some point, Shakespeare decided to screw it and then Hamlet and Macbeth became a thing so yes— _grammar_ , Kairi, _grammar_. Our ever-present vocal lord and savior."

Her choked, wet chucklortle broke the silence. That voice. She would recognize it anywhere. More snot appeared on the tissue, and she wiped the back of her hand over her eyes. In the shadows of the dimly lit storage room, Kairi looked puny.

"It's you," she mumbled.

"It's me," he said.

"What do you want Sho?"

Now that was an excellent question, Sho thought. Originally, to get his bags so he could get outta there. But now, he wondered if he should keep going—kick her while she was down. As delicious as that sounded, a part of him couldn't do it. Instead, he just stood there, watching Kairi bend her knees to her chest and crumple the gross tissue. He raised an eyebrow at that. The 'Miss Ono-san' that he knew would never lay her hands on something so filthy. Sitting on the disgusting floor was blasphemy enough.

"Nothing," was all he said. His knees moved of their own volition and he was soon sitting in front of her, cross-legged. "I saw what happened. That 'admiring' reporter? What dick."

"It's not his fault," she automatically dismissed. "It was bound to happen. They always ask that question." Kairi sniffed mucus and coughed, gargling the snot like a reverse mouthwash. "I should've been ready."

"Yeah, sure," Sho rolled his eyes. Scooting to the side, he leaned against the cage next to her, eyes now on the ceiling. "He didn't even _try_ to fake being nice. Went right for it. Literally the definition of a dick."

"People say _you're_ a dick," she countered, although the insult fell flat. It was more to have something to say than to acknowledge the weird worry in his voice. He raised his eyebrows in reply. "I mean," she offered, "I just…" Her eyes turned to stare at her feet. There were a few moments of silence before she quietly said, "It's not his fault."

"Hch," Sho exhaled out his nose in disbelief.

"You should get going," she mumbled to change the topic. Anything to avoid how strangely caring he sounded. She wiggled a bit to create some breathing room between them. "You never stay for these things."

"True," he said but didn't budge.

"Oh." She tightened her arms around her and sank her head deeper into her elbows. "Okay."

For the next five minutes, neither said a word. Sho was statuesque, his eyes glued to something invisible, and when she peeked from underneath her limbs, he looked lightyears away. Her mind screamed at her to leave, asking what others would say if they saw the two of them together. The peace was so weirdly natural that she wished he would start talking if only to dispel the lack of awkwardness.

Shouldn't she be fidgeting? Saying something about his inability to be a person? Trying to get him to blush? Advancing on him just so he could turn his distracting stare on her? Yet there she was, just _sitting_ , and there he was— _just sitting_. She wanted to poke him to be sure in case this was all in her head. The Shoichi she knew never looked so pensive.

"Ayato solved the Minnow Problem."

What?

Her mouth formed an 'oh' shape, and Sho barked sardonically at her reaction. He half-smirked at her, one side remaining serious, the other wanting to break into a full-on grin. "Crazy, I know, but the truth is," he said. "I didn't come close either. Square peg, round hole." He shrugged nonchalantly. "It would've been a tie, too, if Ayato wasn't hit with some mad divine intervention. Don't beat yourself up over it, and that reporter guy—" He turned his head to the side. "—don't worry about him. You're more than what the internet says."

"I… guess." Kairi bit the inside of her cheek. "It's just… Even if you didn't solve the problem, I still feel like crap."

"Mmm," Sho grunted. His face was a mask. Another minute passed before Kairi suddenly burst.

"Weeks of preparation, you know?!" Her exclamation ricocheted around the room. "Weeks of memorization, cramming information into my brain, and just staring at my PC!" She gripped her left sleeve and dragged the arm to her chest, clenching it with everything she had. "I tried so damn hard, a-and—and I thought… I don't know!" She squeezed her eyes shut. "Maybe my dad would… And then that intern just—" She inhaled roughly even as several droplets ran down her face. "—God! I hate the media! They're constantly watching! Why can't they just leave me alone?!"

"Why can't you ignore them?" was his reply.

"I—" She froze at his words.

"You failed. What of it? I fail all the time."

"But nobody cares that you fail," Kairi blurted.

"Rude," he said but held no malice. "Point is," he gestured to the door, "you're Kairi fucking Ono. You got second at regionals and got yourself some scholarship money. Who cares what a twerpy intern has to say? Who cares what anyone has to say?" He twitched the right side of his face. "Far as I'm concerned, only two other people get to talk shit to you about this tournament, and neither of them includes that intern _or_ your deadbeat dad."

"He's not a deadbeat," she muttered.

"And I'm a finance major."

Kairi gulped down her saliva and wiped a hand across her face. She didn't feel that much better, to be honest. A few words will never wipe clean an emotional tornado. The media would blast her defeat on every channel, forcing her dad to eventually see it, and when that happened—she couldn't think of anything worse.

Still, she knew Sho meant well and whispered as much. "Appreciate it."

"Ah," he dragged the word in a grating tone. "No need to start proposing."

She couldn't help but snort in amusement. "As if."

Sho exhaled again in his version of a giggle.

They returned to their companionable silence, and Kairi found herself enjoying it. Glancing at Sho, she realized his eyes were closed and he'd managed to doze off. There was so much innocence on his features. "Unbelievable," she murmured with a smile. Stranger things have happened, she supposed.

It was at that moment that Akinari chose to burst through the door, entirely frazzled. "Kairi!" he hissed. "What are you doing here?" He denied her answer when he spotted Sho; caramel eyes soured in distaste and the junior curled his lips. "Come on, the dance is about to start. Let's go."

"She doesn't take kindly to that," Sho suddenly answered. "Getting commanded around like that." Blinking his eyes a few times, he pushed himself upright into a languid stretch. "Your laces are untied by the way." Akinari fell for the oldest trick in the book and received a snicker for his efforts. "You're actually so dumb."

"What did you say?" the flustered boy snarled.

Sho rolled his eyes disdainfully and pivoted around the guy like he didn't even exist. Worse, the condescending way he dismissed Akinari with a hand struck hard at the poor sap's ego. "Try not to ruin your diapers. Global warming and all that."

Akinari clenched his fists and turned, ready for his counterattack, but Kairi interjected and called to Sho. She wasn't sure exactly, but she had the urge to thank him again; but the newest winner of the regional Tournament of Champions was already halfway out the door. Her thanks wilted in her throat. Then, Sho paused and turned to look at her from over his shoulder.

A smile so genuine appeared on his face that she almost didn't register his next words. "Hang in there," he said. "Angelic presence, remember?"

* * *

 **Floor 1**

The cage they appeared in was different than she remembered. It was round, not cubical, and the bars were copper-colored, not silver. There was a dome over them, horizontal bars intersecting at spaced intervals, like the cages used for songbirds. Strange, angular lines were etched into the metalwork. They looked unlike the designs she saw before. Interesting.

Sho and she were in an equally stylish cushioned chair, dark red velvet, and with soft pillows supporting their lower back. She'd never seen Sho sit so straight. It must have been the binds that constricted them, golden chains that snaked around their wrists and their ankles and attached to the arms and legs of the chairs. They were seated side-by-side at the center of the cage hanging about a dozen meters or so above the ground, kept airborne by six long cables. The only other piece of furniture with them was a round table, white, and fringed with silver. It sat in front of them with two glasses of water filled with five ice cubes each.

At least she had her weapon, she thought, her sword and knife floating head-height to her right.

Kairi craned her neck around to scan the rest of the room. Everything was exactly as she remembered it: the windows that made most of the ceiling; the chandeliers, and their golden halos; and the beautifully decorated marble floor, equipped with cloth-covered tables, gilded chairs, and place settings, color-coded for the schools that attended the Tournament of Champions. It was the ballroom where the party had occurred, and in the distance, she could see the backdoor where she shared her moment with Sho. The only scenic difference was the bright lights that shone in their faces and the constant murmur of an alien language wafting from below.

Escaping the binds was easy enough. Kairi swiveled in her seat and gestured to Sho with her fingers. "Psst, hey. You good over there?" He had that weird neutral look from the previous puzzle room; his reply to make eye contact. "Great, wiggle over here. See if you can turn your chair around toward me."

Sho mildly nodded. He twisted himself a few times to turn the chair around then hopped a couple of paces back until his back was within her reach. Now normally, she knew he would be questioning her every decision, but right now, he just seemed… gone. A husk.

Luckily, the lock on the back of their chairs was the same: a red-colored, locket-shaped device with a sapphire at its center. It hung from the same chains that bound them and emitted a soft hum. "Open sesame," she said. The item glowed bright blue and tendrils sneaked out from the metal, encasing the device. It spun itself to the right and opened. The chains disintegrated like a lit fuse, and Kairi blew on the back of Sho's head to get his attention.

"Hey, you're free. Snap out of it, and do me. We're on a tight schedule here." She checked the cups and saw that an ice cube had melted in each one. "Twelve minutes then the cage dunks us into the middle of a Filrith frenzy." She stretched her neck to look out the cage and saw brief flashes of light from below. "The CFM team seriously overexerted themselves."

Sho nodded again and robotically stood upright. His unfocused eyes dragged themselves across their cell, found something interesting and a flicker of life ignited in his eyes. He meandered over to the bars and gave them a rough tug. "They're not going to break," Kairi said exasperatedly. "Not that one anyway. It's the one over—" Her voice was cut off by another bar tug. "Dude, what are you doing?"

No response.

Kairi followed his gaze and saw he was examining the monsters awaiting the inevitable drop, but even that didn't shake him from his reverie. His entire body language read flaccid, and she wasn't sure he even knew where they were. A second ice cube melted, and Sho finally decided to free her. "Open sesame," he said in a monotone, the chains melting away to free her sore wrists.

"Took you long enough," she said dryly. Her body naturally braced for his comeback, and when none came, she was instead hit by a wave of worry. It would normally take all her effort to shut Sho up. Now he was just standing there, staring down at the cage floor.

"Well that's a pogchamp," Kairi muttered sarcastically. Leave it to the boy wonder to have a meltdown in the middle of a life or death situation. They had absolutely no time for this.

She angrily brushed past Sho and approached the set of bars to the opposite side of the table. Making an L shape with her finger, she oriented it in front of her vision until her thumb was barely touching the edge of the table. Then she carefully slid it until her index lined up against one of the bars and her thumb formed a tangent line with the circumference. She did the same with her other hand, creating a midpoint between her hands. That was the pole she had to cut to get them out of there.

While she did that, Sho was watching. Her movements struck sparks against the dull flint of his mind, and that unsettling feeling he had when he remembered the Minnow Problem flooded into his chest, unleashing a chill that seeped into his bones. Such feelings contrasted so much that Sho was struck with paralysis. Whatever idea had appeared in his mind went unnoticed by Kairi as she pulled her sword from its invisible, airborne sheathe and took a resting position with the blade laying flat against her right shoulder.

She did say she'd done this before, Sho's thoughts echoed in his head. True, another thought said, but she seems too comfortable in this situation. The situation—were it not so clear by the giant canary cage that they were in—that represented way too precisely the events of their past. So, the reassembling threads of his mind chorused, why was Kairi Ono so comfortable?

She didn't seem phased by the beings beneath them either. She called them Filriths, but she must have known she was wrong for these individuals were titled as an «Admirer». That feeling he had was solidifying into suspicion. He observed the way they moved: their long legs remained straight with each step, hardly bending at the knees like they were on stilts and unable to balance. They wobbled about in their formal attire; tuxedos for the male-like Admirers, different colored dressed for the females. Every couple of seconds, they would turn their white, expressionless masks toward him and it would flash, followed by a flourished bow. Some held champagne glasses filled with—he recalled—apple cider that they would randomly offer upward; a toast for the prisoners.

When they drank, the liquid would splatter across their masks. It would drip through the eye holes and down onto their shirts. Over and over they performed the task, soaking their clothes, indulging themselves in the sweet high life.

He turned his attention back to Kairi now in time to see her sword searing itself into a midnight-cyan. She held it in a leftward wrath guard, the sword pulled back over her shoulder and behind. It was a baseball player's home-run position, winding the arms even further for a devastating strike. Releasing a slow breath, she swung. The move whooshed with a low-pitched sound and sliced diagonally from top left to bottom right. Then it returned to rightward wrath guard and slashed from the top right to bottom left. The second strike was more powerful than the second; in the heat of the moment, Kairi was lifted several centimeters off the ground and lost control of her swing, slicing into the nearby bars.

 _Zooumhf!_

Several purple hexagons appeared along the skewed attack trajectory. Sho caught the words «Immortal Object» before the blips vanished. The damage was done, however, and her target clattered to the floor. The dazzling display of precision was mitigated by the understanding that she had done this many times in the past. To cut something like that without sending it spinning _away_ from the attacker, with a sword skill no less—that took some competence, even with a wild second strike. Competence, or continued practice. Sho furrowed his brows, his first real expression since they had been in the cage.

A third ice cube melted.

"Here," Kairi offered, handing him the chunk of the bar she had carved off. He stared at it, uncomprehending. "Your weapon. A staff? Sho, please tell me you're still in there. We're not out of this thing yet." When he still didn't take the item, she grabbed his left hand, pried open stiff fingers, and placed the weapon into his palm. The words «Pole of the Songbird» appeared in a menu box. They were also accompanied by «Would you like to tag this item?».

"Tagging is like soul binding," Kairi explained, anticipating the confusion. This only served to deepen Sho's suspicions. "It puts the player's name on it, prevents them from selling the item to a merchant, and allows for access to the item's stats menu." She peered out the cage with one hand gripping on to a bar and frown at what she saw below. Interesting indeed. Turning upward, she stood on her tiptoes and found she was still able to reach one of the horizontal beams.

"It doesn't stop the item from being stolen from your inventory. Gives you an identifier and personalization options. Crystal binding prevents things from being stolen, but," she heaved herself back into the cage and walked toward the floating knife by her chair. Sheathing it by her hip, she motioned for him to follow, relieved now that he didn't look so stupefied. "We won't get crystal binding till floor thirteen, and even then, the crystal drop rate is like, ten-thousandth of a percent. Oh, and if it wasn't obvious, you can still steal someone's stuff if it's materialized."

She sure knows a lot, Sho thought bitterly. His suspicion festered beneath his features but he focused on remaining neutral looking. He had to be certain. So he followed her gesture and stepped toward their exit. A soft breeze blew across his face, and he let himself be preoccupied with the sheer size of the room. How this was hidden beneath the fields of the first floor, he had no idea. Then again, for all he knew, they could have been teleported somewhere completely different.

Storing that thought in the back of his head, he watched Kairi climb out of the cage, clinging on to the first horizontal bar and bracing her feet against a vertical bar. Her two-hander hung awkwardly on her back. With a huff, she sprung upward, hands clenched around the next horizontal bar and feet now resting on the previous horizontal bar. Then she repeated the motion, feet evenly spaced to maintain balance, shoulders loose. Further misgivings dug its way deeper into Sho's stomach. He'd never seen her do something like that before.

He climbed after her. Whereas Kairi was methodical, Sho's was entirely instinctual. He latched onto whatever he felt was good, moved with the natural grace of a simian. He'd climbed trees when he was younger; they were his safe havens, and heights held no fear for him. He remembered his mom calling 'con chim ngại' in Vietnamese—her little mockingbird—for he would climb so high that others could not follow, tossing taunts to those grounded. Even with the pole jammed between the folds of his Common Tunic, Sho made swift progress. He overtook Kairi and stopped atop the cage.

"Afraid of heights?" Kairi asked. She brushed a few stray hairs from her face. He might actually converse now, she thought. She'd notice how that brief climb seemed to change his features; his face was starting to show signs of color.

Sho didn't acknowledge her words.

"Uh, right." Kairi bit her tongue. "Now all we have to do is zipline down the cable to that door. Once we pass, we'll be safe from the Admirers." Sho quirked an eyebrow at that, but she didn't seem to notice. Immediately switching the name of the mobs without any reaction— _clearly_ not suspicious at all. "Be prepared to roll, or at least scrunch your legs. I recommend a running start. We'll be safe in there." At Sho's brief nod, she bolted forward, knowing that they were going to be down to the last ice cube by now. "See you down there!"

Her whooping joy contrasted from the sinking feeling at his core. The screeching sound of scraping metal on metal didn't help either. He let her get halfway down before he pulled his pole from its tucked position and leaped, locking the weapon over the cable. Curling his feet to his chest, he whizzed down the length of the wire, water soaring out the corners of his eyes. As he neared the door, he pulled down on the pole to increase the force on the wire, which decreased his acceleration. His feet crashed into the wood and it blasted open, throwing Sho into a sea of darkness.

He converted his landing into a roll and sprung immediately onto his feet, the pole whipping in a defensive arc, having predicted that enemies might have been on the other side. True to her word, however, there were no enemies, just an empty space devoid of color. He saw Kairi standing in her relaxed position.

"You did it!" she beamed. "Poggers. One more room then we get our prize. Come on."

Sho simply nodded.

Kairi sighed at the lackluster reaction. Fine, be like that. She released a slow breath to steady her nerves. There was still more work to be done, and while having Sho at one hundred percent was certainly useful, she decided the quiet was useful. It helped her concentrate; pick out the differences in the new rooms.

With a quick flick of her head, she led Sho forward. The darkness dripped away and the players found themselves on a jagged, rocky path overlooking a massive ravine. As they walked, more things appeared, triggered by hidden layers of code that marked their distance. It was all quite cinematic. Even the tennis court-size platform that settled at the end of the room looked like an ominous meeting for one's worst nemesis. The giant bolt-and-lock mechanism that sat there was an imposing feature.

Hours of work, she thought. Hours of work.

She was quite proud of herself.

* * *

 **Don't forget to review!**


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